Anyone can apply to be a foster carer, even Caroline Pemberton and Oliver Sterling, as fans of 'The Archers' know. But in real life there is a desperate shortage of people willing to take often very disturbed children into their homes.
Events ranging from a balloon launch in Rhonnda to a bus poster campaign in Dundee have been staged during this month's annual Fostercare Fortnight recruitment drive (May 10-23).
Many already involved in foster care believe that a more effective way might be for the Government to fund local authorities to meet foster carers' costs, pay for their skills and give them effective support and training.
Last year's Green Paper, Every Child Matters, invited radical suggestions for 'encouraging people to become foster carers and ensuring they are valued and recognised'. However, the Next Steps document, published as a result of the consultation exercise, largely overlooks foster care, according to the national charity, the Fostering Network.
Robert Tapsfield, its executive director, says, 'We are hugely disappointed to see no concrete proposals for improving the foster care service. This is despite the emphasis on fostering in the Green Paper and despite the huge number of responses they received emphasising the need for an improvement in payment, allowances, training and support for foster carers' (see box).
A spokeswoman for the DfES says the Government is committed to recruiting and retaining more foster carers. It is planning to expand the existing national helpline and launch a new award, and it has already issued local authorities with new campaign publicity packs and allocated the Fostering Network a three-year grant to encourage people to consider fostering.
A survey by the Fostering Network earlier this year found that foster carers in over half of English local authorities receive less than the charity's recommended minimum fostering allowance, leaving them out of pocket.
Even when they are compensated, they can face financial uncertainties, says foster carer Susan Mais, who looks after children with challenging behaviour.
Her allowances and fees total 325 a week per child, but last year one child did almost 7,000 damage to the house. 'Most of it was deliberate. She smashed things. When they come from a background where they do not have anything, they don't value anything, even clothes. I could buy her new clothes. They would last two days before the seams were ripped.'
Nevertheless, she says, 'It is so rewarding when you see a child achieve a goal, however simple.'
The majority of foster carers in England receive no fee for their skills and have no access to 24-hour support from someone with fostering expertise, according to the Fostering Network survey.
'The situation is unfair and unsustainable,' says Robert Tapsfield. 'If high standards of foster care are to be provided for the children who need it, the governments of all four nations in the UK must act now to ensure that regulation and funding are in place to pay all foster carers for the invaluable work that they do.'
The children going into foster care today have complex needs, having suffered trauma, abuse or neglect.
Barbara Hutchinson, deputy chief executive of BAAF Adoption and Fostering says, 'The foster care service must develop from its historical base of being a largely "volunteer" service.
'Fostering is not just about offering a similar kind of care to that which you would offer your own child. It is about caring for children with very complex needs, and that means providing training and support.'
She proposes that foster carers should be ranked as equivalent to residential social workers. 'They should be paid 52 weeks a year and at a level where they can make provision for their pensions,' she says.
The annual turnover rate among foster carers is around 10 per cent, according to Professor Ian Sinclair, co-director of the Social Work Research and Development Unit, York University and co-author of Foster Carers: Why they stay and why they leave, which surveyed more than 1,000 foster carers.
Professor Sinclair says, 'Breakdowns of placements are a major reason for foster carers leaving. The reason that they do not leave is that they are committed to the children they have got. When a placement breaks down, you feel bad and the things that led to the breakdown were probably unpleasant.
There is no child there for you to be committed to. At that point a lot of people leave.' NW
Fostering facts and figures
Fostering is a way of offering children a home while their parents are unable to look after them.
The average placement is for three to six months, but it can be a day or years.
The aim is to return the child to the family, but in severe cases of abuse or neglect the child might go for adoption.
More than 78,000 children and young people are in public care on any given day in the UK. Almost 50,000 children live with 38,000 foster families.
Another 8,000 carers are needed.
Fostering Network recommends that carers should be paid a weekly allowance per fostered child to cover their costs, ranging from 108.49 for a child aged up to four living outside London to 222.28 a week for a 16-year-old in London.
Anyone can apply to be a foster carer, regardless of age or whether they are single or a couple.
Applications take about six months to process. Applicants are allocated a social worker. They complete a form designed to assess their skills and identify training needs. They attend training sessions, undergo police checks and provide their life histories.
Approval is given by a fostering panel including social workers, foster carers, local councillors and people who have been fostered as children.
Further information
For an information pack on fostering and becoming a foster carer, contact the Fostering Network, e-mail info@fostering.net, tel: 020 7620 6400.
BAAF Adoption and Fostering, www.baaf.org.uk
Foster Carers: Why they stay and why they leave by Ian Sinclair, Ian Gibbs, and Kate Wilson is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Visit www.jkp.com.
Foster Placements: why they succeed and why they fail is published later this year and Foster Children: where they go and how they do, next year.
