Future of Foster Care Consultation

Part 4: Our Vision For Foster Care

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The aim of The Promise is for children to grow up loved, safe and respected living in the family home, and there must be enough support to make that happen, with extra help during difficult times.

If our collective efforts to achieve this through action support in early years, whole family wellbeing and child poverty is successful, it will enable more children to stay with their families. In turn, over time, there should be less of a need for alternative care across all settings, including foster care. We know, however, for some children, alternative family care, to ensure their wellbeing and protection, will continue to be needed. This should be in a loving home, and they should be able to stay there for as long as is needed.

Foster carers have a key role to play in achieving The Promise’s ambition for our children and young people, and ensuring they can live within a family environment with all the benefits this brings.

Foster carers have a special set of skills and qualities. They provide security, stability and kindness. They build trusting and often long lasting relationships with children and show patience, resilience, and confidence to deal with situations which do not go to plan or are challenging. Foster carers listen to and advocate on behalf of the child, supporting their educational, health and social wellbeing. And they adapt according to the needs of the children and young people that they care for. For example, recent societal changes have led to more unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in foster care.

Many foster carers do more than provide a positive family experience in their own home. Where they are supported by social workers and other professionals, and circumstances allow, they play a key role in children and young people keeping in touch with their birth family – mum, dad, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or grandparents.

We also know that the foster carer role means they can often build open and trusting relationships with birth families where there might be more wariness of professionals. These core skills have been used in the Step Up Step Down^[7] programme which gives parents the support of a foster carer who can ‘step up’ if the family needs additional support, and ‘step down’ when parents are in a better place to support their children. If the family experiences a crisis, the children can stay with a known foster carer for a short period of time, rather than being placed with someone unfamiliar to them. The foster carers can also provide mentoring to the birth parents, and a wider programme is provided for families including training, therapeutic nurture groups and community supports.

The role of foster carers has, and continues to evolve, in order to:

• meet the needs of the children and young people they are looking after and help them develop and thrive into their future;
• reflect evidence-based changes in practice, including innovative projects including trauma informed practice; and
• respond to technological, societal and legislative changes, such as the strengthening of regulations to give siblings the legal right to stay together and connected when appropriate, if removed from their birth family.

Providing alternative family care for children unable to live with their birth families will remain the key role of foster carers. We will continue to improve the current fostering system so that children and young people can meet their full potential, and carers feel supported in helping make that happen. But we also want to build on the good practice and innovation happening in Scotland and elsewhere. And we want to continue stretching and adapting our thinking about foster care. We need to think about how it best meets the needs of our children, and what might need to be changed in the future to continue ‘getting it right’ for every child requiring alternative family care. Current practices across different parts of Scotland and the UK clearly demonstrate that some foster carers are already expanding their skills and confidence and have the capabilities to meet the changing needs of children, practice and culture. We will encourage and develop this further.

But, most importantly, we need to continue to listen to what children and young people tell us about what is important to them and build upon the positive experiences of people who have spent time in foster care.

Our vision for the future of foster care is set out below.

Our Vision

Our vision is for Scotland’s children to experience a flexible fostering approach which continually evolves to meet their specific and unique needs in a changing society and sector. This includes alternative family care, which prioritises children’s experiences, and embeds within it maintaining family time, supporting families and managing cultural differences or complex needs.

It is underpinned by listening to the voice of children and young people, upholding their rights and ensuring they feel safe, loved and respected.

We will improve the current fostering system and provide ongoing support for caregivers to develop their skills and knowledge, so they can nurture the children in their care, and play their part in delivering The Promise.

More detail of the flexible fostering approach is set out in Part 5.

Question

What are your views on our vision for foster care?