Every day around 70,000 children are living with almost 55,000 foster families. With record numbers of children in care and around 12 per cent of the foster carer workforce retiring or leaving every year, The Fostering Network estimates that 7,200 more foster families are needed in the next 12 months alone to ensure all children needing foster care can live with the right family for them. There is a particular need for foster carers to look after teenagers and sibling groups.
Fostering services work all year round to find and recruit the foster carers they need locally to look after these children. Without enough foster families willing and able to offer homes to these groups, some children will find themselves living a long way from family, school, and friends, being split up from brothers and sisters, or being placed with a foster carer who does not have the ideal skills and experience to meet their specific needs.
Number of foster families needed across the UK
|
UK |
7,200 more foster families needed |
|
England |
6,000 |
|
Northern Ireland |
300 |
|
Scotland |
500 |
|
Wales |
400 |
Methodology
In order to calculate the recruitment targets, The Fostering Network uses the best available statistics and sector intelligence and makes a number of assumptions based on our market knowledge.
There are three elements in the calculation:
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Replacing those who leave the fostering workforce during the year
Using the Ofsted dataset for England, we take the average percentage of the fostering workforce leaving across the previous three years. We assume it will hold for the forthcoming year and that it is applicable across the UK.
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Number of children in care on any one day
The number of children coming into care has been rising in recent years. We look at the rise in the previous year in each nation according to government statistics, and, using sector intelligence about current trends, adjust this to provide an estimate for the rise in the next 12 months.
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Increasing the size of the pool of available foster carers
Fostering services continue to report that in some parts of the country there are simply no available foster carers or specific shortages of households willing/able to care for teenagers, sibling groups, disabled children, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and so on. We, therefore, include a further element to enable growth of the pool of available foster carers to improve placement choice.
The sum of these three elements gives a percentage rise which we apply to the number of existing foster families in each nation. In England these figures are taken from the Ofsted dataset, elsewhere they are calculated from The Fostering Network’s membership database plus an estimate of the number not in membership.
A slight adjustment is made to these figures to reflect some national differences, giving us the recruitment targets in each nation.