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

They are looking to be classified as workers rather than employees I believe so again different set of rules. But Fostering has more to it than just parenting - you are often dealing with children with multiple health, mental health/emotional and physical issues and there are skills involved in that that are generally beyond the experience of Jo Blogs parent.

I do think they should be entitled to respite/holidays and help when they are sick e.g. hi op or other major issues that need recovery time rather than just losing their income if the child is elsewhere or someone else is having to come in and be paid for.

Vocation - not sure that is the right word here. Nursing, teaching, caring, social work and even priests are a vocation they all get paid properly and have rights (although the priest tends to get a stipend)

From the perspective of the child in care, it's even more complex. Sometimes they want love, not care.

I don’t really have any proper understanding of the matter but always thought of them as self-employed, for example not taking new placements if they didn’t want to as opposed to being told what to do and when like an employee. They can determine their own theirabouts during the day etc. So a bit of a grey area really.

Some FC will put their FC into respite care when they go on holiday, some will take them with them (usually at their own expense, though the LA might pay for something like the passport)

Quentin - as far as I understand it, though, you can't cherry pick which bits of employment legislation would apply, so although the person taking this case is focusing on sick pay and termination of contract, another FC might take a decision that fostering is legally a job and push for NMW to apply

Live-in care workers don't take the children into their own home/family, but they are in effect raising these children as no one else is doing that role.

I don't think necessarily that being paid to do a role isn't compatible with actually caring about the children. And foster carers are paid at the moment, aren't they?

They do trot off on leave
My child had 7 moved in 15 months for respite (holidays). Shockingly bad for a new born and has had a lasting impact

Yes but live in care workers do a shift and get to go home. They don't treat the child as part of their family and in effect raise them. I personally don't see it as a job and I wouldn't want to be a child in foster care where I thought the carer was looking after me because they were paid to do it.

Is it not similar to live in care workers who work in residential children's homes? It's the same role being performed, acting as a parent to the children in their care.

It's a very particular type of job, though, isn't is? It isn't the same as being in an office 9-5 (or whatever). And if it is a job, then NMW applies which would be pretty much unaffordable for most councils, I'd imagine, as FC could claim for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week when they have a FC living with them.

(I don't disagree with your wider point, that caring roles are undervalued because they are primarily done by women)

If foster carers were predominantly male there would be no need for such debate.

Their rights as workers would have been assured at the point at which their role was defined.

See also nursing, teaching, social work ad infinitum.

Can we see it as both? Most of us have emotional as well as financial relationships with our jobs. The people who care for the most vulnerable in our society are also vulnerable, unless they have access to adequate emotional and financial support. I think you're right, op, that the only reason this kind of care work is so badly paid is because it has historically been done by women.

I know nothing about it but heard the same report. My instinct was that a foster career is fulfilling a parental role and surely it cannot be good for the child to have your career trot off on holiday or sick leave.

On the other hand maybe there is room for in between placement paid time off.