Can anyone tell me about long term fostering?

[RitaMorgan]

DP and I have considered fostering/adoption for a while (DP's godparents have been foster carers for about 40 years so he has a fair idea of what it is like). He would rather foster than adopt, but I would prefer to foster with a view to the child staying with us throughout their childhood rather than short term placements - is it possible to sign up just for this?

We have a toddler ds, but would like to consider a primary school age child (or a same sex sibling pair) - I'm not clear if that would be allowed while ds is young, or would we need to wait til he is older and only foster children younger than him?

Any other suggestions or information about fostering long term would be great.

There are different types of fostering - short term (which can be anything from 2days to 2 years + It all depends on the circumstances of the child. Some children will return to their birth parents, whilst others will be placed for adoption of permanent fostering dependent upon their age. Most adoptors want to adopt a child under 5, and so most children over this age (especially sibling groups and children with disabilities) will await a permanent home. This can be by way of permanent fostering, Special Guardianship or Residence Order. Sorry I don't think it's going to help to explain all this in detail at this stage.

You are right in thinking that any child who is placed for fostering or adoption really needs to be the youngest child, so that he/she doesn't have to compete with a younger child. Also if an older child is placed your own child loses his place as the eldest child in the family (even though he is the only birth child) but are you thinking of having any more birth children.

The thing is you and your DP need to be of the same mind, or it won't work. I actually think that it might be best for you to apply to short term foster initially. You don't say how old you child is, but I imagine about 2. Some LAs like there to be a 2 year age gap between a fostered child and a birth child. The other thing is that if you did this, you would probably be thinking about a child under 1 year. This is probably not what you want, and in any event most LAs have many foster carers who want to foster babies.

I think the best thing is for you to make an appointment with the Fostering & Adoption team of your LA and they will send you an information pack probably and then if you are still interested after reading the literature, they will come out and see you, to talk through the options. All LAs run training/preparation courses for prospective foster carers/adoptors and if the sws consider you suitable they will invite you onto a course, and then this is followed by comprehensive assessments.

You can also google British Agencies for Fostering & Adoption (BAAF) and Adoption UK, or Fostering Networks (the national organisation for fostering) all of which will give you useful information.

Thanks for the info. I thik we'd be looking at children of 3-5 years old as a minimum rather than babies, so might revisit this once our ds is school age.

Hi there, I work for the UK's children's charity, TACT Fostering and Adoption, we specialise in providing loving foster and adoptive homes to some of the most vulnerable children in the UK.

I hope you don't mind me contacting you directly like this, but I really love where I work so I couldn't stop myself wanting to reply to you after reading your query. I'm the Marketing and Communications Officer there. I don't get to regularly meet our foster carers, but I have come to meet some of them and the children and young people during activity weekends, interviews etc.

We have 9 TACT Fostering offices across England, Wales and Scotland so visit our website: www.tactcare.org.uk/Fostering. Watch and listen to some of our foster carers here: bit.ly/pYAbP5.

You can also watch our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/tactcare

We're also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/tactcare and Twitter: www.twitter.com/tactcare.

Take care and good luck with your search,
Sylvie

Yes Sylvie but you haven't explained that you don't actually have any children and that anyone you recruit/approve has to be "sold" to the LA, and given that all LAs are very cash strapped (unlike some of the charities) it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to be able to afford the fees that are charged. They will therefore always look to place children with their own adoptors. Second cheapest option (yes i know it's not good to be thinking of money but that is the reality) is an inter-agency placement with another LA. Am thinking of adoption here, but the same is true for foster placements.

Hi NanaNina,

I'm quite shocked by your msg;

Firstly I've never heard of the term "selling our foster carers to the LA". Our pool of foster carers are with us, we look after them and have the time to support them 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. We provide them with their own Supervising Social Worker and training through their time fostering with us.

Secondly, No we don't actually "have children", it would be very worrying for an independent fostering agency (IFA) provider "to have" some! Children and young people in care are reported to the social services, their "corporate parent" not an IFA. We work closely with local authorities across the UK.

Even though the economic climate is bad, this actually means that a lot of LAs do need our help as more families than ever need help looking after their families. LAs' own children's services are stretched, many LA social workers have 40 cases - each of our own social workers have no more than 12 - this mean they can look after foster families properly.

We tender with LAs and are on many preferred providers lists across the UK. We work with more than 70 local authorities.

We get an average of 1,000 referrals a month for the London & South East area alone. We actually need foster carers more than ever as TACT Fostering & Adoption's bigger and bigger.

www.tactcare.org.uk/Fostering
www.tactcare.org.uk/Adoption

You might not have heard or like "selling FCs to the LA" but that is in fact what happens, whether you like it or not. Yes yes yes I know you can give excellent support to your foster carers because you have the luxury of a workable caseload, unlike as you say LA foster carers. No one would deny that the level of support you are able to give is excellent.

You say you "tender" with LAs - what does this mean if it doesn't mean"selling your families" - maybe "tendering a service" sits more comfortably. All LAs are desparately short of FCs and one of the reasons is because of IFAs springing up and charging LAs very big bucks for the services they provide. I am aware of how children come into the system after 30 years as a LA sw and tm mgr in fostering & adoption.

The puzzle to me is that LAs have any foster carers left because IFAs pay them around 3 times as much as LAs do, and sadly many IFA carers don't understand that the money for all this support, therapy for the child, out of schol provision, play therapy etc comes from the LA!! This means there is less and less money for LAs and that is before their budgets are slashed by this govt.

I am not blaming IFAs because privatisation has been openly encouraged by parties of all political hue, and this govt won't be satisfied until all public services have been privatised. They mistakenly believe that this will provide a better service. Onlyrecently Cameron was saying that if LAs did not get children adopted within 12 months, the duty may be taken away from them. I would love to see some IFA or vol org come try to take over - that would be very revealing.

Of course you will be getting more and more referrals because you pay the carers more and the excellent support etc, but this is because FCs who used to foster for the LA are moving to IFAs. I worked independently for 5 years after retiring from LA sw and did do some assessments for an IFA but found that these applicants did not realise that they had to be "sold" to the LA for a placement of a child. This had not been explained to them, and so I explained it to one family who were very alarmed and moved to a LA and the IFA told me that I had no right to give these details!!

Me again - I note that TACT is registered as a charity. All this means is that it doesn't pay shareholders. Charities receive charity as donations from people. Calling yourselves Charities makes it sound like you do all this work for nothing!! I noticed in the FAQ you point out that it will take 5 -6 months to get assessed, whereas it will take 12 months for a LA assessment.

Can I ask whether at any stage in the recruitment stage you actually explain to applicants how IFAs work and that they are dependent upon the LAs "buying" families for children who they canot place "in-house" - do they realise that in these days of constriced budgets, managers are told to get children back into "in-house" placements ASAP because of the funding issues. Bad for children, but that is the reality.

I will second what Nana Nina says... the main thing being that LA's are doing everything they possibly can to get kids back 'in house'... saves them so so much money... massive recruit drives are happening to get more carers on board to the LA - to save the LA money!! IFA's are always a very last resort.

So Sylvia, how much £'s exactly would you claim per week from 'an' LA for a child lets say who is 2 years old? How much of this do you then pay the carer?

I can then use this as a comparison - and just for the record, the support I receive from my LA is outstanding. I too am looked after 'properly'.

Will await Sylvia's response with interest BtheD!!

Now now ladies - it is Sylvie not Sylvia!! This must be down to your poor support from your LA!!

In all seriousness, I do find it offensive how much money that LA's pay to IFA's. If the IFA's didn't charge as much then the LA would be able to fund more SW posts which would reduce the case load down from the silly amount that the SW's certainly within the family placement team in my LA have to deal with, it would also allow for more training and support for the LA's carers.

I must say that I feel that we are also really well supported. Yes it is sometimes frustrating as the LO's SW's are so stretched that actually trying to get in touch with them can take a good deal of effort, but perhaps it is from my back ground as a nurse that I understand that there is just not the resources to go round as we would all like to - and this comes back to the outsourcing of placements to the IFA's

I should really congratulate my LA as they have now managed to rejig finances and our allowances are very good, as are the other financial matters (mileage allowance ect) and they are seeing a lot of carers that they lost to IFA's actually reapply as they are now not that much better off with an IFA as they are not getting the placements to get the allowances paid, as they LA have been really successful in their recruitment drive after coming up with a new pay scheme.

I am guessing that BtheD will not get an answer to her question, which is a pity as it would then become much clearer, and would highlight just how IFA's work in selling - sorry tendering families.

I am not trolling, and certainly not having a pop at any one who carers via a IFA, I know at least of one very lovely MNer who went with an IFA mainly as the LA were dreadful dealing with her application. I also don't blame the carers who go with IFA's for the support or the higher wages, as hey after all it is a "job" and I am not even having a pop at Sylvie (although the first sentence was a bit cheeky but it was done tongue in cheek) as she obviously firmly believes that her employer provides a good service. I guess my bug bear is probably with the system for allowing IFA's to practice where if everyone worked together we could give these vulnerable young people/children/babies a much better service, by providing carers with good pay conditions and good training and support.

Hi All,

I think I may be the person Squidgy is talking about. I am with an IFA and am awaiting our first placement. Our matchinbg criteria are quite strict due to the needs of our son.

We did choose to go with Barnardos because the LA were completely incompetent and that was before we even managed to embark on the assessment process. Having many years experience in the social care setting I decided that this initial incompetence was enough to suggest what I could expect as a carer. We are also planning to give a home to a child with a disability, and Barnardos does this well. So far the support and training has been fantastic.

However regards payments..........Barnardos do not actually pay any more for 1 child. Where carers receive, what I believe to be, excessive payments is when they are caring for multiple children. When this happens then the boarding out allowance plus carers fee is paid per child. With out LA the carer gets one carer's fee and multiple boarding out allowances. That seems to be what makes the difference.

I understand that all agencies whether private companies, voluntary organisations and charities charge huge fees to LA's and I'm not sure how that is going to be resolved. The bottom line is that if people want to be Fostercarers and have a choice between beng a carer for an aorganisation which provides good levels of support and training and those who don't, they would be silly to choose one where the support is less than adequate...........so maybe if LA's make more of an effort to actually deliver good systems of support and training to carers and be consistently competent then more folks who are now with agencies would be more likely to return to LAs. I know I would.

Certainly agree with SB and Shaz. I think SB you have hit the nail on the head with your post. When IFAs first "appeared" we in the LA were not too worried but things changed very rapidly. The director of this IFA held a meeting (unknown to us) in one of "our" foster carers homes and did his utmost to "poach" as many carers as possible with promises of much more money per week and much better support. No surprise that some moved very quickly. Others remained loyal to the LA. This IFA grew quickly (he was a better entrepeneur than social worker!) and he became a millionaire and drove around in a porsche and bought strings of race horses etc. The IFA soon began operating nationally. On a visit to my son in London, a woman who was cleaning for them, was fostering 2 children from the area in which I worked (some 200 miles away)

The IFAs were springing up all over the place in the area in which I worked and as we were losing carers, we had to "buy" these placements when our backs were against the wall. One of the worst things was whereas we had always placed a child in his/her home area (or verynearby) now a child had to be placed wherever there was a vacancy. Cornwall to Dundee maybe.......this went right against fostering legislation which laid down a duty to place children in their home area or as near as possible. Yet at the same time govts (of every political persausion) were encouraging IFAs as they wanted all public services privatised (which is happening more and more) One hospital already "sold off" to an international company, proving Cameron to be a liar, in saying that there would be no privatisation of hospitals. Sorry I digress! But the system that you mention SB is in fact the government who make the law.

It's good to hear SB that your LA have got it's act together. I was a Fmly Plct Team Mgr at the time (one of 7) and we put a lot of pressure on senior managers to start paying the loyal carers more to dissaude them from moving to IFAs and taking on more staff for extra support. Sadly it all fell on stoney ground, and they just kept telling us that there was not the money in the budget. BUT the LA carers said quite rightly "but there's money in the budget when you are forced to buy an IFA" - exactly right and we had no answer.

Shaz - I think we've "spoken" before - Barnardoes is not an IFA. Do you know if your LA has a contract of any sort with Barnardoes to place children with disabilities - they often do. If they don't, then you may have a very long wait, although of course these children are very hard to place and I am sure Barnardoes are flagging you up to LAs.

I too don't blame carers moving to IFAs - I just wonder how we managed to hold on to so many loyal carers. I have been retired for 7 years so don't know what is happening on the ground now, but I think that carers who go to IFAs must realise that they will only get a placement when there is absolutely no in house placement available. Also what was happening in my time was that snr mgrs were telling us to get IFA children back "in house" as soon as there was a vacancy. Very bad for the children but that was the reality. This was all before the viscous cuts were made, and I know from ex colleagues that social workers are on their knees with very high caseloads etc etc.

Finally even if Sylie doesn't respond (and I agree I don't think she will be allowed to) it is easy to find out what IFAs are paying carers and anything else you want to know about support etc. You just phone one up (there are plenty to choose from) and pretend you are just considering fostering but want some basic info - you don't have to give your name and address - just say that you will have to think things through. I have done this several times with very interesting responses. I asked one iFA if the children might be difficult and she said "oh no, not at all, they're just children who can't live with their parents" - I played dumb and asked why they couldn't live with their parents and she said "oh they're probably in hospital or something like that" - I asked if she was a sw and she said "No but I know how it all works!" She was most reluctant to give me any info about payment and suggested I maybe should talk to a sw!

I have however received information packs from others where I have given my name and address.

I think to live in a system where children are "bought" and "sold" is dreadful, but that's what it amounts to and believe me the directors of these IFAs are loaded, with the government's blessing!!