Film joins debate on foster system reform

A NEW film about the UK’s foster care industry, which premiered at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, is set to screen worldwide with the aim of influencing the debate on reforming the care system.

Hell’s Pavement is based on the real-life experiences of Irish foster carer Brigidin Gorman and her family. Brigidin was fostered as a child by an aunt and uncle, and has now gone on to be a foster carer herself, fostering 63 children.

The film focuses on the journey of the main character, Aimee, through five years in the care system, and highlights a series of problems she has.

The central theme of the film is the reaction of all the professionals involved in Aimee’s care, which is shown through an emergency child conference. Aimee is placed with an experienced foster family, but is then uprooted for reasons of budget, rather than for her own benefit, with tragic consequences.

The film will be screened at the International Global Foster care conference which begins in Dublin on Sunday, and which brings together professionals from the care sector to discuss how to improve the fostering system on a global basis, as well as being taken to 30 film festivals around the world with an interest in social care issues. The filmmakers are also discussing bringing the film back to the Glasgow Film Theatre later this year.

The film is critical of the £4bn a year spent in the UK on the care system and highlights statistics which emphasise that increasing investment in the system is being used inadequately and has failed to improve the lives of children.

According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, children who have been in care are 66 times more likely to have their own children taken into care. They are 60 times more likely to become homeless, 50 times more likely to spend time in prison and seven times more likely to misuse alcohol or drugs.

Brigidin’s family and the team behind the film want to see a number of changes to the current foster care system, which include better use of resources for more of a support network for children in and leaving care, more joined-up services and communication between the police and medical and social professionals involved in safeguarding a child’s welfare, and the elevation of foster carers to a professional status.

Leading children’s charities in Scotland have given their support to the film’s agenda for reform for improving the lives of children in care. Sara Lurie, director of the Fostering Network Scotland, said: “The film-makers have identified the need to give foster carers a professional status and for more joined-up working across the care system. We believe that putting foster carers at the heart of the professional team that works with a child and giving them the recognition and status they deserve will lead to better outcomes for children in foster care.”

A spokesman for Action for Children Scotland, which runs a number of services that support young people who have been in the care system, said the foster care system has to be improved: “Anything that helps to focus attention on the plight of these children and young people is to be welcomed. We need the widest possible debate about how we can deliver better services for this important group of young people.”

Children in Scotland said the charity would definitely back calls to increase the value placed on the workforce in the care sector, and agreed there should be more joined-up services in the care system.

A spokeswoman said: “There should be universal services available to everybody, so that people are connected and there is more communication and more working together between the different sectors that are responsible for care.”

Andy Kemp, the director of Hell’s Pavement, says Aimee’s story is commonplace in the care industry. “What our film shows is what happens to kids, who are nervously taken out of their family environment, and put into care, and the life Aimee depicts in the film is what often is ahead of them,” he said.

Kemp said he wanted the film to demonstrate the remarkable job that foster parents do against the odds for children in care. He believes that giving foster carers a professional status is crucial.

“They shouldn’t just be considered as well meaning amateurs. They’ve got to be regarded as professional people, because they do a professional job. We need to invest much more, not so much in money, but in value for these people,” he said.

Kemp says Aimee’s negative experience of the care system in Hell’s Pavement is down to a breakdown of communication at an industrial level, despite the best intentions of everyone involved in safeguarding her welfare.

Keith Gorman, the executive producer and one of the writers of Hell’s Pavement, ran a fostering organisation for five years with his mother, Brigidin. He wants Hell’s Pavement to make a broader audience aware that the care industry is fundamentally flawed.

“The title of the film, Hell’s Pavement, is derived from the cliché that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That’s really what we’re driving at, that everybody that works within the industry does mean well for the children they’re intending to work for, but unfortunately, either through legislation or through quirks within the system, people tend to lose their way,” he said.

“I was asked when we premiered the film, you’ve come up with all these problems, what’s your solution? There is a fairly simple solution, which is simply raising our expectations for foster parents, because they are the most important professionals in a child’s life. Looking for well-educated, bright, energetic families, who are willing to treat this as a profession and be treated as professionals within the industry is a very important step.”