Fostering in Bucks: time to rattle some cages!

We all know that County Councils up and down the country are facing a crisis of significant proportions around finding and indeed paying for social care - be it social care for vulnerable adults, older people or children/young people who are now being looked after by the state.

Buckinghamshire County Council is no exception. It has statutory responsibilities to care for 'looked after children'. The most recent Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board Annual Report (2015-16) has the following information:

Children Looked After

Our rates of children looked after have become more comparable to our statistical neighbours over the last few years, but remain lower than rates for the South East or national. Given the relative prosperity of Buckinghamshire compared to other areas, this is to be expected.

At March 2016, 463 children were being looked after by the local authority. Of this number:

• 52% lived outside the local authority area and 57% were placed further than 20 miles from home. 83 lived in residential care. This figure remains high compared to other areas;

• 195 lived with an agency foster carer and 83 with a Local Authority foster carer;

• 7 were in independent living; 

• 24 lived with parents;

• In the last 12 months there have been 38 adoptions - an increase from 30 adoptions in2014/15

The County Council has been seeking to increase the number of foster carers for some years. I would expect that this is driven by concern for the well being of the children themselves as well as the fact that foster caring is considerably cheaper that residential care (extracted from here 2012/13 figures):

• a council foster care placement was in the range of £23,000 to £27,000, compared with a range of £41,000 to £42,000 for a placement with other providers.
• a council residential care placement was in the range of £129,000 to £215,000 (compared with a range of £122,000 to £200,000 in a voluntary, private or independent home)

So I think we can all agree, that foster care for Looked After Children is better than residential care. (Though not in all cases, of course). The challenge then becomes one of recruiting and keeping adults prepared to foster children.

How is Bucks doing, given that this is one of their priorities. We might hope, rather well... but is it? So from the same BSCB report above we discover that "20 new foster carers were identified this year (a reduction from the 30 identified last year). However, 19 stopped being foster carers within the same time frame". So that is a net gain of one.

The report goes onto to say:

Private fostering is when a child under the age of 16 (under 18 if disabled) is cared for by someone who is not their parent or a ‘close relative’. This is a private arrangement made between a parent and a carer, for 28 days or more. In such situations the Local Authority must be notified so that they can check on the suitability of the placements and ensure other advice and support is provided.

During the last 12 months, the Local Authority has undertaken considerable work to increase awareness around private fostering, but this has not had a significant impact on the number of private fostering notifications [my added emphasis]

And with what result from all this work? One extra foster carer over the course of the year. It doesn't point to a great deal of success...

But there is good success elsewhere and plenty that is know about what it takes to run successful foster carer recruitment campaigns. For example the Social Care Institute for Excellence has this information:

Successful campaigns are likely to have the following features:

• good knowledge of the local area
• close collaboration with experienced carers
• systems in place for following up enquiries
• use of the local media
• ongoing recruitment drives.

A majority of foster carers were attracted to fostering because they had spoken to existing foster carers, seen or heard a description about fostering in the local media or both. Foster carers thought that if they played more of a central role in recruitment they could address commonly held public fears and stereotypes about fostering and social work.

Higher levels of pay is also an important factor that can influence recruitment levels. One foster carer in a consultation group said:
'We might not do it for the money, but I wouldn’t do it without the money.'

Fostering Network (www.fostering.net) takes the view that no one should be out of pocket as a result of fostering. Each year, the Fostering Network produces a minimum recommended fostering allowance and a survey, which keeps track of the allowances paid by fostering services throughout the UK.

Have you seen any evidence of this in Buckinghamshire? Do you get the impression that the County Council says recruiting foster carers is a priority but isn't doing very much that is visible about this apart from putting up the odd poster in a library...?

There is this website: http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/care-for-children-and-families/fostering/becoming-a-foster-carer/

True...

So I searched on > recruiting foster carers buckinghamshire strategy < and found this: https://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/documents/s85538/Buckinghamshire%20Looked%20After%20Children%20Strategy.pdf

It is an illuminating report, not quite a year old. It says:

The number of foster carers provided by the Council’s fostering service has remained the same in the last four years. The recruitment of foster carers in Buckinghamshire is extremely challenging. There was only one fostering enquiry per thousand households in 2013/14. Most comparator authorities have twice as many enquiries. 

Whilst recent Council investment in marketing has driven a 25% increase in fostering enquiries in 2014/15, with a doubling of the numbers of people receiving an initial visit and subsequently being assessed, the impact of this on increasing the numbers of foster carers needs to be evaluated to decide where the in house recruitment should focus future activities. The loss of foster carers, through retirement or other factors means that the net gain in available carers is very small.[my added emphases]

In other words, not much is being achieved...

Later on the document reports on this action:

Increase the number of local foster care placements through a radical
partnership with fostering providers.

A radical partnership! Hmm. Sounds good. So I googled to find more. All I have found is this (https://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=85542) which is a report some three months later, listing the same set of actions...

I just get the overwhelming impression that Bucks County Council are great at talking and fluffing their limited successes. But when you drill down, the results are just not really there.

This needs to change! 

We need more people prepared to rattle the ruling administration and push for the fine words to be turned into action and thence robust results. In short, please vote for me & Robin so that we can rattle a few cages! And in this instance, roll up our sleeves, and see what can be done about increasing the numbers of foster carers.