I think Busterthedonk has covered all the essential points from the foster carer prospective in a very comprehensive manner,m but I am posting as a retired social wrk and Tm Mgr of a F&A team - 30 years experience in all. It isn't really possible to be approved for "emergencies only" as emergencies don't happen to order (sorry not being sarcastic) and in a sense all short term placements are emergencies, as it means that a child has been removed from birth parents, either with or without their consent. If it is without their consent then the LA have to get a court order. I think Busterthedonk has illustrated this point very well, by her "emergency placement" and the children still there 1 year on. In some cases this can stretch to 2 or 3 years.
Once a child has been removed from birth parents, and placed with foster carers, then assessments have to be carried out on birth parents and this takes an awful long time. The social workers have to carry out lengthy assessments, as do psychologists, psychiatrists (if there are mental health issues) a guardian (who is a social worker but not part of the LA - they work for CAFCASS (Children & Family Court Advisory Service) and all of this takes months and months and all the time you will be caring for the "emergency" placement! Sometimes birth parents are given the opportunity to be placed in a residential setting with the child for staff to monitor how they care for their child.
If at the end of all this the child can be reunited with parents, but more usually the LA will go to court for the final hearing, with an application for a Care Order or a Placement Order (this is used for babies and young children as the plan will be to place them for adoption and the younger the child, the quicker it is to find an adoptive placement) However if adoptors cannot be found, then the next option is to look for permanent foster carers. Here lies another problem, because if there is no one in the extended family is suitable, and permanent foster carers canot be found, then the child remains with the "short term" carer and this can go on for years......
It is possible to be approved as respite carers, which means having a child for a short period to give foster carers a break to re-charge their batteries. Some LAs have schemes whereby respite carers take children straight from their birth family for short periods of time (maybe 2 weekends a month) or something similar. Not all LAs have the latter scheme.
The other thing I would say is that you are looking at babies and children in the age range of 0 -2 and to be honest, most LAs don't have a need for carers as it is a very popular age range with foster carers. The need is for older children (7 - 12) sibling groups and children with disabilities. You may find that some LAs will not assess you for this reason. A pity I know but most things are finance related (it was bad enough before the govt took
over) but now all public services budgets have been slashed and it is becoming more and more impossibe to run services with depleted budgets. This ties in to the point BtheD made about LAs expecting foster carers to transport children to contact. This was never the case in the past (children were collected by contact workers who supervised the contact and returned the child home) BtheD is quite right if it is a baby or very young children, daily contact will be the case, because as I'm sure you realise babies and toddlers will not have the recall of birth parents if they only see them once a week.
As BtheD says her LA is only prepared to assess prospective carers who are drivers and will agree to do the transport. Quite shocking really, but that's a sign of the times.
Just a warning about IFAs. They will probably be very willing to assess you, and they do pay carers considerably more but what I don't think many carers realise is that the IFAs charge the LA huge amounts of money to "sell" them one of the families that they have recruitred. This means that their are massive profits for the directors of IFAs - I know some of them and one drives a Porsche and another has bought his 4 adult children their own homes and has a string of race horses - I could go on but I'm sure you get the message. They don't have access to any children of course, so they have to "sell" you to an IFA and as DtheB says LAs are loathe to "buy" these placements for cost reasons. Mind I think if it were a toss up between a carer saying she wouldn't do transport to contact, and the only other option was an IFA they would quickly agree to provide contact transport!!
I would be very surprised if LAs had to buy placements from IFAs for 0 -2 years. But it all depends, if it happens that all their foster carers are full then they have no option. If you do decide to contact IFAs I would ask them how many 0 -2 placements they have sold to the LA in the past 12 months/2 years. They are a business and are sometimes economical with the truth!
You ask about transport for contact and whether you have to stay - I don't know the answer to whether they now want you to stay (a contact supervisor) is meant to observe contact, make notes on the interaction between the child and parents) and I think it grossly unfair if they are expecting carers to do this. It isn't that carers aren't capable of doing this - I'm sure most carers are far better than some of the contact supervisors I have comes across (one used to be half asleep during contact) and the notes they make are hardly worth the paper they are written on.
I honestly think that carers for LAs should get together (united we stand divided we fall) and negotiate some sensible arrangements about this business of transport and observation. As you say the idea of dragging your own children for miles in the school holidays is ridiculous in my view. So long as foster carers keep agreeing to do it, nothing will be done. I know LAs budgets have been slashed but that is not the problem of the carers and Directors of LAs should be telling the govt that they can no longer ensure that children have contact. The importance of contact is not only to ensure the child knows the parents haven't disappeared off the face of the earth, but when it comes to court, lawyers for the birth parents will drive home the point to the judge that the parents have been afforded proper contact and that could mean the LA are sent off to give them this opportunity and that means a longer and longer wait for the child's future to be secured.
Sorry I am going on so long ......................
Have you thought of childminding instead!!! (seriously)
BustertheDonk - any chance you could organise with other carers for proper negotiations and compromises made to deal with this issue of transport to contact?
