An innovative project to encourage and support more Muslims to become foster carers was launched last night (Monday 13 March) at a charity gala dinner.

The event raised funds for the new Muslim Fostering Project and was hosted by the Better Community Business Network (BCBN), a Muslim-led organisation that identifies and supports worthwhile community projects. The Muslim Fostering Project will be established and run by the UK’s leading fostering charity, The Fostering Network, and the prominent community development charity, Mercy Mission UK.

Figures released today by Cardiff University, using data from the School Health Research Network survey in Wales, suggest that young people in foster care in Wales have higher rates of weekly smoking, binge drinking, recent cannabis use, and poorer life satisfaction, compared to children living with their parents or other family members.

 A study by seven British universities has revealed significant inequalities in child welfare across the UK, with children in the poorest areas at least 10 times more likely than those in the most affluent to become involved in the child protection system.

On Wednesday 22 February 2017, Ofsted launched the social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) which will be implemented in April 2017. Ofsted have worked with key stakeholders (including foster carers) across England to develop the new inspection framework which focuses on three core principles across all inspections in children’s social care namely:

Young people who have grown up in care are far more likely to die in early adulthood than other young people according to a BBC report today.

Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request show 90 people who left care in the UK between 2012 and 2016 died in the years when they would have turned 19, 20 or 21. Care leavers make up one per cent of the population at these ages, but make up around seven per cent of the deaths.

The Fostering Network is delighted to endorse the Initial Family and Friends Care Assessment: A Good Practice Guide which is launched today. The guide, which was developed by Family Rights Group in partnership with an expert working group, of which The Fostering Network was a member, aims to provide social workers with a clear framework for undertaking preliminary assessments of family and friends (commonly known as viability assessments).

The UK’s fostering system is under ‘unsustainable strain’ and is being held together by the goodwill and commitment of thousands of dedicated foster carers, leading fostering charity The Fostering Network is warning today (Tuesday 31 January 2017). This risks undoing the hard-won improvements in raising the aspirations and achievements of fostered children, undermining the terms, conditions and recruitment of foster carers, and increasing long-term societal and financial costs.