Foster care in England
Two recent green papers are influencing significant changes to fostering in England:
- Care Matters, published in October 2006, and
- Every Child Matters (link to Every Child Matters website), published in 2003.
Creating a framework that can deliver services that are increasingly personalised and beneficial to children will require changes of everyone involved in foster care, and the Fostering Network is helping bring about these necessary changes.
We provide:
- advice and mediation services, which contribute to the independent support of carers in many circumstances, including allegations. Our advice and mediation service has not only pioneered an approach to independent support where there are allegations against carers, but also in cases of complaint and dispute between foster carers and their fostering serivce. Our five advice and mediation staff work closely with our FosterLine team
- a range of training courses, which are used by local authorities and IFPs for groups of their carers and social workers. We also provide an open course programme which can be attended by individual foster carers and social workers from all over England
- a young people's project worker who works with and on behalf of young people, in partnership with other voluntary organisations. The young people's project has been particularly successsful in influencing leaving care arrangements in the light of recent legislation, as well as remand foster care and intensive fostering
- a membership development manager who works with foster care associations to enable them to be more effective in their own localities and regions, and to bring them together in a national forum
- an advice line, called FosterLine, to help foster carers in need of support or information.
All of these services and projects are in the process of continual development, underpinned by an approach which ensures that we contribute to improved outcomes for children in the light of Every Child Matters.
