Nursery World - Councils fail to offer foster care

Struggling parents who have access to short-break foster care schemes are more likely to keep their children out of full-time care, research for the Department of Health has found - but only 12 local authorities in England have developed schemes to do so, despite having had the power to provide this type of service for more than 15 years. The foster care schemes are designed to provide short breaks for children and support for parents who are experiencing difficulties or stress. They offer a flexible service that can be used by families in a variety of circumstances, such as when a child is excluded from school or a parent needs to spend regular short stays in hospital.

The foster care schemes are designed to provide short breaks for children and support for parents who are experiencing difficulties or stress. They offer a flexible service that can be used by families in a variety of circumstances, such as when a child is excluded from school or a parent needs to spend regular short stays in hospital.

The health department commissioned the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education in London to find out more about barriers that deterred local authorities from establishing such schemes. The report, Support foster care: Developing a short-break service for children in need, published this week by the Institute of Education, said that local authorities feared the recruitment of support carers would reduce the pool of potential foster carers even further. Many schemes have struggled to keep going financially and have only been able to develop by tapping into other sources of funding.

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