For Afia Choudhury, foster care is a vocation. The former youth worker, who has fostered 27 children for the London borough of Tower Hamlets over the past 14 years, was recently given the Fostering Network’s president’s award for her contribution to care. “I love what I do,” she said. “I came into it with my eyes open. But I don’t think most people realise how hard foster carers work for the allowance we receive.”
The under-reported pressures and frustrations of Britain’s foster carers are spelled out today in a report by the Fostering Network, seen by the Observer, which portrays a sector on the verge of crisis and warns that, unless conditions for carers improve, some of the most vulnerable children could pay the price.
The State of the Nation’s Foster Care report found that while 58% of carers felt they were treated as an equal and valued member of the team by their foster child’s social worker, a quarter were not sure what day-to-day decisions they had the authority to make and a significant number did not feel able to make decisions that had been delegated to them.
None of these findings will come as a surprise to Choudhury, a devoted carer who recognises that the fostering system is flawed. “It’s a very challenging job to do in difficult circumstances. There have certainly been times when I’ve sat down and cried,” she said.
Choudhury, 51, has been fostering three siblings aged from 8 and 13 – who had been severely neglected – for the past seven years. “They had several health problems as a result, so we were in and out of hospital and the GP clinic a lot during the early days. I don’t live in Tower Hamlets so there was also a lot of travelling across London so the children could have contact with their family,” she said.
Choudhury took out a £47,000 loan for a loft conversion so that she could offer all three siblings a home together. She said she had received excellent training from Tower Hamlets but that many other carers across the country struggled to get the training they needed. “When children make a disclosure about abuse [they have suffered in the past], it is heart-wrenching. We need support, not just 9 to 5, but out of hours, too.”
There are signs that the pressures are taking a toll on foster care. The report found that only 41% of carers planned to continue fostering for as long as they were able.
The Labour party estimates that the sector is facing a shortfall of about 8,000 carers. “Ministers have been repeatedly warned that carers feel undervalued and are given allowances that fall short of the costs of looking after a child,” said Emma Lewell-Buck, the shadow minister for children and families. “With more children entering care every day, urgent action is needed to support these children and those who care for them. The next Labour government will set up a review on establishing a national fostering service.”
Change cannot come soon enough for Rosanna Miles (not her real name), a retired teacher who has fostered 15 children over the past 14 years. “The allowance I get – which works out at £2.50 an hour – is not enough to cover the expenses of the children I’ve looked after, never mind pay me a wage,” she said.
Fostering, Miles feels, is under-valued by social workers. “Social workers are paid so badly, the good ones – the experienced ones – want to get promoted and become managers,” she said. “Then you are left with young, inexperienced people making decisions, and sometimes the needs of children are not sufficiently taken into account when they are moved to a new placement. No matter what you as the foster parent say, it is not respected. I miss two of the children I fostered so much, it is really hard for me to look at their faces in photos.”
Fostering, said Miles, could be “unbelievably distressing”. “The foster children who come into care nowadays are in a much worse state than they used to be,” she added. “Austerity cutbacks mean some parents are not able to feed their children. One 21-month-old toddler came to us who would go through the bins to get food and pick crumbs off the floor. Others come from very neglectful and abusive families.
“It isn’t just a matter of providing them with food, shelter and clothing, although they will arrive with nothing more than what they are standing up in. You have to do a lot of work to help them through what they’ve experienced. There have been countless occasions my husband and I have said: ‘I’ll never foster again’.”
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