‘Governments are failing children in care and their foster carers’: National fostering charity warns of impact insufficient foster care allowance has on young people

The Fostering Network, the UK’s leading fostering charity, warns that foster carers, hit by the cost-of-living crisis, struggle to afford looking after the children in their care. The allowance they receive, which is supposed to cover the cost of looking after a young person, is not sufficient and with the rising cost of living, many face difficulties to make ends meet.  

In new research, published today, the charity calculated the real cost of looking after a child in foster care and is calling on all governments across the UK to up the allowances foster carers receive to ensure they cover the full cost of caring for a child.  

Foster carers are currently receiving much less than they need to support the children in their care. Many dip into their own pockets to cover the costs of caring and they have done so for years, well before the current cost-of-living crisis. This was never an acceptable situation but now, as inflation rises and energy, food and fuel prices soar, foster carers may no longer be able to fund the gaps left by the state.  

The charity is concerned about the impact this has on children in care, as well as retention and recruitment of foster carers. In a survey, conducted by The Fostering Network, 70 per cent of respondents said they have considered quitting due to the rising costs and not being able to afford to look after children in their care anymore. This is at a time, where all across the UK, 9,265 more foster families are needed next year alone, to ensure every child can stay with the right foster carer for them.  

When the decision is made that a child needs foster care, the state is responsible for meeting that child’s health, education, social, emotional and physical needs. This includes covering the costs required for their healthy development. All UK governments accept this principle, yet in practice, children are not getting what they need to live healthy lives.   

Mervyn Erskine, chair of The Fostering Network, says: ‘Governments must act now to make sure that children in foster care and the families that support them don’t go without.  

‘Increasing the foster care allowance is vital to enable children to thrive, but also needed to counter the retention and recruitment crisis the fostering sector was already battling with prior to the cost-of-living crisis. 

‘Currently, governments are failing the very children they are legally responsible for, as well as the foster carers who look after them. 

‘Many of the children coming into care will have experienced extremely traumatic starts to life and foster carers help them overcome this trauma and enable them to flourish. To be able to do their best for our young people, foster carers must be supported – and that means ensuring they have enough money to provide for the children in their care, who they look after on behalf of the state. 

‘We believe decisions relating to finance should always be made with the children’s best interest at heart.’ 

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