- An acute shortage of foster carers in Scotland is pointing to a care emergency
- Children as young as three years old are being placed in residential homes
- TACT Fostering, the UK’s largest dedicated fostering charity, is calling on the government and all fostering providers to take urgent action
A recent statement issued by Scotland’s thirty-two Chief Social Work Officers has highlighted an acute shortage of available fostering homes in Scotland, with children as young as three being placed in residential homes.
Whilst a shortage of foster carers across the UK has been a long-standing issue, children under five years of age being placed in residential homes alongside much older young people is alarming. Local authority foster carers are historically approached first for very young children. Therefore children being housed in residential homes is less about a change of approach for local authorities, and more about a decrease in foster carers generally.
This should be triggering an urgent ‘call to action’ for the government and fostering providers to increase carer recruitment efforts.
Andy Elvin, TACT Fostering CEO and Chair of The Fairer Fostering Partnership, an umbrella group of charitable fostering providers, said: “With the recent statement issued by Scotland’s thirty-two Chief Social Work Officers with regards to the acute shortage of available fostering homes, it is clear that this is a care emergency. Children as young as three being placed in residential homes isn’t acceptable or in the best interests of children.
“Here at TACT Fostering, we’ve introduced a number of financial wellbeing initiatives to help make fostering viable for more people. We’ve also introduced our ‘making spaces’ program centred around increasing our carers’ spare bedroom capacity to provide additional care, particularly to help bring siblings together.
“However, we do need more action at a governmental level as a matter of urgency to bring more people to fostering across Scotland. We would happily work with our Scottish local authority colleagues and the Scottish government in a national foster carer recruitment effort.
“It is clear that we need to work together in concert to address this emergency. The new legislation requiring that all Independent Fostering Providers are charities is an excellent opportunity to promote fostering across Scotland.”
Whilst the initial response needs to be finding suitable foster homes for under fives that are being placed in residential environments, local authorities and independent fostering providers need to prioritise carer recruitment strategies.
Organisations should also be looking to nurture and upskill their current foster carers, where possible.
Moving forward, it does seem that there needs to be a general change in the way local authorities approach the foster carer/family finding process for under fives and, in fact, all young people. Most independent fostering providers prepare and nurture their foster carers to match the care need in each region, and usually this does not include very young children.
If all requests for care were to call on both in-house local authority and external agency carers simultaneously, with the ‘best match’ being the goal in every scenario, all fostering providers would be in a better position to respond to care emergencies such as this.
Ultimately it would help to create a wider pool of foster carers able to care for children of all ages and with differing needs.