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For four years Kerry* has fostered babies and toddlers with her husband. Here she explains why she supports our Keep Connected campaign and feels passionately that transitions within and out of the care system must focus on children’s needs and protect their relationships with their foster carers.
BUT - it’s a short word with so much power. It can change the tone of a sentence, a conversation, a meeting. It can suck the wind from your sails. And I’m fed up with hearing it in relation to fostering.
Dorcas came into foster care when she was 14. Three years later, aged 17, she has received an offer from Oxford University to study law. She tells us how she decided to take her future into her own hands, and what it needed to defy the statistics about care leavers.
A lack of support for foster carers, along with a failure to recognise the vital role they play at the heart of children’s social care, risks undermining their ability to meet the needs of fostered children, a leading charity is warning today.
The role played by foster carers has never been more important. Three-quarters of children in care are in foster care, and with a rising number of children entering the care system, improving the experience of care and raising the outcomes of looked after children must start by ensuring foster care is the very best it can be.
With such importance placed on the role of foster carers, The Fostering Network carries out a survey of foster carers every two years. Over the past few years the report based on this survey – our State of the Nation’s Foster Care report – has become recognised as the most comprehensive insight into foster carers’ views of fostering in the UK.
Naomi Taylor, a creative for brand agency Mr President, came to our attention after being featured in Campaign – a magazine for the advertising and media industry. In the article she described hitting ‘rock bottom’ as a care leaver before getting her life back on track and winning a prestigious industry award. She also outlined her frustrations with the lack of opportunities and support afforded to care leavers.
Four years ago, with the support of our members, The Fostering Network led a campaign to change the law to allow young people to stay with their foster carers up to the age of 21.
The introduction of Staying Put in England was a huge achievement with the potential to be life-changing for generations of fostered young people. Government, local authorities, charities, foster carers and young people recognised the unfairness in the fact that the average age for a young person to leave home was 24 (it’s 25 now!) and yet those in foster care had to move on six years earlier. All those involved recognised that we needed to do more to support care leavers in the transition to adulthood, and the new law sought to offer this support and stability.
However, the promise of Staying Put remains unfulfilled.
'In July 2008 my grandchildren came to stay with me under the supervision of children’s services. Their mother – my daughter – had struggled with mental illness and accompanying demons of drugs and alcohol for many years. They returned home to her several months later, but by spring 2009 they came back to me on a child protection order. They have remained with me ever since.
We have been disappointed with the negative portrayal of care and the experience of looked after children in some media over the last few days, surrounding the new documentary series by Lemn Sissay. While The Fostering Network always welcomes a focus on looked after children and the care system we feel that the coverage was not reflective of the reality of the vast majority of fostered children and young people.
