Scottish Government response to foster care review

The Foster Care Review, established in December 2012 by the Scottish Government to address a number of issues identified by our stakeholders and by foster carers, and as part of previous work through “Moving Forwards in Kinship and Foster Care” published its final report on 3 December 2013.

The report put forward six recommendations on the issues of placement descriptions, a national foster carer database, placement limits for fostering households, learning and development of foster carers and allowances and fees. The Scottish Government is grateful to all of the Review members for their careful thought and consideration in attempting to address legitimate and important specific concerns affecting the provision of good quality foster care that will shape the direction of travel for the foster care provision in Scotland in times to come.

Overview

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the life outcomes of all children and young people. In cases of family distress all those responsible or supporting the family in one form or another need to be absolutely clear about how we work together to support children, families and communities by ensuring that alternative care arrangements such as foster care are of the highest quality and where carers feel supported in providing placements for those who come to them for a home.

A co-ordinated and unified approach to identifying concerns, assessing needs, and agreeing actions and outcomes, based on the wellbeing indicators is one of the core components of Getting it Right For Every Child, which makes a difference to the success of early interventions, especially where the child’s views are taken seriously and acted upon. We must be conscious of any risk of early intervention resulting in more children coming into care – in particular becoming looked after at home where the challenges around improving outcomes for this group are well rehearsed. Therefore, the partner policy aim here is early permanence. Both early intervention and early permanence are needed to meet our aims of reducing the number of children on long term supervision requirements and increasing the numbers finding secure legal permanence. Focusing on these two areas in the years ahead, and through the shared actions set out in this response, will lead to a system of intervention and substitute care that wraps around the child and is effective, affordable and swift.