Should foster carers be treated like workers or is it a vocation?

Foster carers do get paid peanuts when you compare it to a nanny or a childminder. Not to mention that the role is 20 times more difficult and you need a larger property to accommodate the children.

To answer the point about holidays - usually the FC doesn't have parental responsibility, and has to seek consent from those that do (often the birth family) to take a child out of the country. Even domestic holidays can be impossible if no agreement to miss contact with birth family can be reached. My DP's fostered some preschoolers for 2 years - throughout those 2 years there was court-ordered contact with the birth family 3 times a week. How can you take the kids with you, like part of the family, in those circumstances?

The cost of such children being accommodated in children's homes is many times higher. It's frustrating that they can't put a bit more in at the bottom floor to keep children out of institutions.

Babies get a relatively low payment, but can have withdrawal issues, serious health needs and developmental delays that show only with time. I damaged my shoulder sleeping with my hand in the baby's cot, because he couldn't settle. Had he been mine, I could have coslept with him. That's a life long injury.

Of the 4 children I fostered, all 4 have significant developmental, emotional, or physical needs.

No one would expect a nanny to look after challenging children 24 hours a day.

I couldn't sustain the pace- I burnt out after seven years.

Yeah the fee for fostering teenagers tends to be higher than that for fostering under 10s.

Melony - in effect, children needing foster care are graded but not on a scale of 1-10. Some have higher needs than others, some could only be placed with an experienced foster parent.

(And needs tend to get more demanding as children grow up, not less....)

Of course foster carers should be paid a living wage and have proper respite and support.

In no other career do we argue "make sure the conditions are really difficult and its paid as badly as possible, that way we'll get the best possible people performing at their best".

The reality is though it is a job. Most councils expect foster carers to not work.

And it's agencies pay 350 a week on average, not 500.

I agree, notarehearsal.

The problem with "vocational" roles that historically have been fulfilled by women, is that it ties the actual doing of the role to there being something inherent about the women that perform it.

Look at the language that is used to describe (good) nursing care (linked to my own experience); compassion, love, kindness, sensitivity let alone the imagery of nurses as angels that you find commonly in the press. These are all heavily gendered terms that tap into this 'innate female sensitivity' that is spouted as enabling women to perform intimate, often sequestered and unpleasant, difficult, life-cycle linked jobs. When I went into nursing as a postgraduate, people told me I was making such an "admirable sacrifice" and "there's no way I could do it". I would argue this type of nonsense keeps the pay low and suppresses nursing from being the profession it clearly is; no one talks about physios, speech and language therapists, dieticians or other HCPs in the same romanticised way.

Perhaps the foster children could be graded (bit difficult and I'm sure there will be an outcry on this thread) but if the child for example cannot be left / as the example above, cannot be in the company of a man / has severe disabilities needs assistance with everyday life, then they are a grade whatever and this grade gets more respite/ time off/ higher payment as there is no possibility of the fostercarer working etc. The age of the child would influence this so perhaps as they grow older they become a lower grade. I don't think you can generalise about fostering as some children must be there short term due to family issue and returned after a few weeks, others might be rejected by their family and need care all of their childhoods. Also some may go on to be adopted. And the health issues must be right across the board.

Ok i'm really not sure how to make the system better. Bit I admire foster parents. They are incredible people.

In my LA foster carers are considered self employed. I fostered for fifteen years, primarily teenagers. I was given a fee for the work I was doing and a maintenance allowance for the actual needs of the young people. This worked out at approximately £210 each payment, around £420 per week. So, in effect, I earned £210 per week to care for someone else child. When I say care what I actually mean is working for up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year ( I chose not to take respite but took everyone on holiday out of my 'wages' of £210 per week)
Dealing with young people arriving at all hours of the night, drugs, assaults, theft, police raids, self harm, suicide attempts, severe personality disordered young adults, missing young people. I could go on but you get the picture. I loved my job. Sadly I hated the bureaucracy attached to the work and made the decision to leave a few years ago.
Though I was more qualified then many of the SW's I worked with, Foster carers are still seen as lowly, many 'caring' positions are.
Fostering is not a profession though some would attempt to say otherwise. It can't be until Foster Carers are educated to a professional standard in the same way as nurses, teachers and SW's. So that's not going to happen, nor would it be appropriate imo.
However, I'd love to see FC's having some employment rights. For now there are none, not one. I don't know how this could happen though as, of course a FC needs to be able to disagree with a placement of a child if that would be an unsafe choice for their family.
I fostered for an income. I used the skills and experience and education I had and chose to work in my home. I earned a lot more in previous jobs and had employment rights but I truly loved fostering in the main. Many jobs could be considered 'vocational'. I'm not actually sure why fostering should be seen as different to jobs such as Social Work, Nursing etc. Surely people who choose to work with the most vulnerable in society should be protected accordingly? And I can't see why Foster carers should feel a sense of embarrassment that they are being paid to do a job. I can assure you it IS a job! For the poster who talked about treating it as a business, for some carers it IS a business. That does not mean they can not do a great job. All the time there are statements such as these there will remain the Foster carers who lie through their teeth about 'doing it for the love of it' Those foster carers rarely hand their fee back to their Local Authority!

But how can it be a vocation? A year of selection, a year of training. Inability to work outside of school hours if you foster older children, and actually they prefer you not to be working at all so you can attend meetings, further training, etc.

By making it a vocation, the only childfree people who would be able to do fostering would be either rich or retired; the only people with families would be where someone is able to be a SAH parent with no money worries.

And considering NO govt or LA would pay for something they could get free, I'm guessing all these people who can afford a full-time vocation aren't exactly kicking the doors down...

Imho its a vocation and aleays should be. I hate the concept of taking in vulnerable children and treating it as a business.

If you go away or are sick then you arrange the same as you would do if they were your own child.

Did you read my point above? If you go away or are sick literally anyone you see fit can care for your child; it's not the same for FC, they can't be left with anyone apart from another registered carer.

£500 is not much for 24-hour care.

surely it cannot be good for the child to have your career trot off on holiday or sick leave

This is a statement with no merit.

It should be a vocation not a job. If you go away or are sick then you arrange the same as you would do if they were your own child.

Children in care are already vulnerable and suffer with attachment issues without there carers sending them away as they want a holiday etc.

From what I've read online, pay is around £500 per week for a private firm foster care arrangement per child so it's a lucrative business and that seems so very very wrong.

Thanks Lonny, it is helpful to understand more about it.

Margo I don't think there's anything like the level of resources to provide respite for coughs and colds. But you are only allowed to leave foster children with a very limited number of people.

So say you were in an accident and needed a few days in hospital and you had DCs, no doubt some fairly random (for want of a better word!) people would rally round - maybe your aunt would take your kids, or that nice friend from school would step up, or you'd hire a babysitter. You wouldn't have any of those options for most FCs, so they either go to respite or have a new emergency placement, which would be hugely disruptive.

The rules round things like babysitting, for eg, are incredibly strict.

I would say they need support workers that can be bussed in to support families during tough times- recovery from an operation, a particularly difficult placement etc.

I was a foster carer and delayed having a prolapse repair because of the impact on my FCs. I needed a six week recovery with very limited work. My own DCs can be farmed out to neighbours, relatives, and left to their own devices a bit. FCs, not so much!

If they put support into the home, it could be hugely helpful and prolong placements.

I'd have liked to be a 'house parent'. To be the foster carer, but have someone else come in and do shifts so that I could recover, get away, etc.

The expenses paid only cover the obvious things- we needed to move house and it was much more expensive getting removal men in because of the DCs.

The 'pay element' is not enough to pay someone else to help out, even if you were allowed to get someone.

That seems very sensible to me Lonny. A family with their own child that had massive issues and needed a very high level of care, may well make use of respite care. I get that completely.

What disturbs me is the thought that have sick leave, like you would for an ordinary job. Some people take time off when they have a cold - would that be how it would work for foster children? They get shunted off somewhere, if you are a bit poorly. That's not how it works for most parents / families. I understand if you have long-term sickness which makes you unsuitable to be a foster parent for a while. Maybe I'm being too black & white about it?

And while fostering is 'paid' it's nowhere near minimum wage. The demands are such that it's highly unlikely two people working full time would be able to foster, for example. Where fostering is a barrier to working outside the home I think it has to be paid.

Margo a DF of mine does respite fostering. Very often foster carers have children of their own and foster very challenging children, where the placement would literally fall apart if the family got no respite.

I know of a family where the fostered child can not be left alone with any male, including the DH and the son of the family. They get fortnightly respite and a week off together twice a year, otherwise the strain on the existing family unit would be too much.

I hadn't realised this was paid for. I thought foster parents looked after children/babies and received money to cover costs. Surely, if you decide to become a foster carer/parent, you do it in the same way as you would for your own children & you don't take holidays from them, they are part of your family - albeit on a temporary basis. Or am I being very naive?