Foster Carers

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Mr Robertson, as Chair, you have a very privileged position, because you hear in Westminster Hall debates some truly remarkable stories. We have heard some today. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for the work that she has done on this issue and for securing the debate, but that is trite—there is no merit in securing a debate. The merit lies in what she said and in the experience that she brought to it. Similarly, I was hugely moved by the words of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey). That is what is remarkable: sometimes, we learn so much more about our colleagues in this Chamber than we ever expected to. We also heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who spoke of his own experience in secondary school.

We have heard today about the power of love and how it can transform lives. It can change a child’s life and set it on a new path. I pay tribute to all those from the Fostering Network who are here in the Public Gallery for the work that they do. I salute them. That service often is not in the vanguard of the public’s imagination, but clearly, what we have heard today means that it should be. It is extraordinary work and it takes extraordinary strength, resilience and compassion to do it. That is what this debate has brought out.

Let me turn to the debate itself and look at the annual fostering statistics. Ofsted has told us that the number of children in care is at its highest ever level in England. I know what the Minister will say. He will no doubt tell us that the number of carers is also at an all-time high, but he knows that the number of children in need of care is at an all-time high. The question that he must answer is not a technical one of provision and so on; it is this: why are so many children in need of fostering care? What is breaking down in our society that means that we have an all-time high and we need even more places than we have? What stress are families are experiencing and what pain—social and economic—are they going through that means we need so many more fostering places because families cannot cope on their own?

I contacted my own local authority and asked for its experience. It told me about the ageing profile of the foster care workforce. In Brent, we are finding it difficult to recruit newer and younger foster carers. Of course, in a city context, that is a function of the demand for housing. If someone wants to be a foster carer, they need a room for the child. The cost of living pressures in London, where both adults in a household need to work simply to maintain a property, are reducing the availability of people who would otherwise desperately wish to become foster parents, as we have heard. For our more vulnerable and needy children in care, having a carer at home for most of the time makes a huge difference to the stability of the placement. That is very difficult if both potential parents have to go out to work simply to maintain their rent or mortgage commitments. In Brent, we are actually turning away people who want to foster and have good skills because they simply do not have the physical space in their homes to accommodate a child.

The Competition and Markets Authority carried out a study of children in social care. I have to say that I found it difficult to read about the final report of its study of the “children’s social care market”. “Market” is not a word I want to use about children or the care of children—“service”, yes, but not “market”. However, on recruitment, the CMA said:

“The difficulty…is greatest for carers needed to look after children with more challenging needs… The degree of challenge also varies geographically.”

The study considered not only areas such as my own in London, but rural areas and the challenges faced by parents there. It is clear that not everyone who wants to be a foster carer has the resources—whether that is a spare room, the spare time or the financial stability—to be able to do so.

The Social Market Foundation has said that, in the next five years, we need 63,000 new families to make their homes available to children, yet it predicts that at current rates there will be 40,000—23,000 short of what is required. I hope that the Minister will say how the Government are preparing to meet the problems of recruitment and retention. How is he ensuring that his Department will assist local authorities with the pressures that they face, and how will it assist potential foster families with the pressures that they face in taking on that responsibility?

I hope that the Minister will also turn his attention and that of his Department to why this is happening—why there is an ever-increasing need. There has been, I think, an 11% increase over the past seven years in the number of children needing foster care. We are seeing an economic crisis and a cost of living crisis, and that will put increasing pressure on families. Over the next 18 months, I think the projected need for 63,000 families will be blown out of the water, because so many families will be in crisis and will not be able to cope, and the result will be increasing pressure on fostering services.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend asks why the numbers coming into care are so great. For four years running, Barnardo’s and the other children’s charities came together and argued the case for additional resources for local authorities for early intervention to support families. They say that the withdrawal of that intervention has resulted in record numbers of children coming into care.

I have another point to make. Like me, my hon. Friend is a London MP. The CMA report states that 20% of children in foster care—the percentage is higher for residential care—are in placements more than 20 miles away from where they live. That is exacerbated in London by the housing crisis, with many local authorities in London having to go as far as Kent and elsewhere to find foster placements. That problem is identified as part of the housing crisis in which local people are prevented from having a spare room available to assist in fostering.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am so glad that my right hon. Friend makes that point. I wrote on a piece of paper comments about geographic dislocation, but I have been unable to find it. It is important because this debate is about connectivity with the child’s environment—with his or her roots—and making sure that there is stability and continuity, which are undermined in exactly the way he describes.

The funding of local authorities is absolutely central to this question. My local authority has lost £180 million in Government support over the past 10 years. That is the scale of the crisis local authorities are facing. I am not saying this to make a plea for my local authority; I am saying it because we have an increasing crisis in caring for our children. The Government have to have a co-ordinated response that covers more than recruitment and retention, because that is just patching up the problem afterward; they must have a proper response to why so many children and so many families need this support.