Foster Carers: Allowances and Tax Arrangements

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Graham, to debate this important petition on foster care allowances and support for foster families. I am standing in for my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who is travelling back from a memorial service abroad and is very sorry to miss the debate.

I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for opening the debate so powerfully on behalf of the Petitions Committee, and the more than 13,000 people, including those from my constituency, Feltham and Heston, who signed the petition. I also thank all our foster carers across the country, including in my borough of Hounslow.

Foster families provide a loving home for 68% of looked-after children in England. Foster caring can be challenging but also very rewarding, and it can be absolutely transformative for vulnerable children. Fostering relationships can last long beyond the duration of a placement, giving some of our country’s most vulnerable children lifelong, stable and loving relationships too. I am grateful to FosterTalk and the Fostering Network for their tireless support and campaigning on the impacts of the cost of living on foster families and the children they care for.

We have heard today about the enormous challenges facing foster carers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) for his speech, in which we heard the story of Emma from his office and the change in support that she has experienced over the last decade. He also referred to the ongoing recruitment and retention challenges, which I will comment on further.

Fourteen years of Conservative government has stripped away vital family support, shifting the focus of children’s services to providing an emergency service rather than early intervention to help families stay together. The cost of living crisis has pushed so many families into hardship, but foster families, who have been undervalued for many years, have been impacted particularly hard. FosterTalk’s 2022 survey, which the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk referred to extensively, found that 92% of foster carers feel financially worse off, and 18% have been pushed into debt in recent years. Reference was also made to the use of food banks. Some 66% of carers have been forced to cut down on their heating to cope with soaring energy costs, and 38% feel that their mental health has been affected due to the increase in the cost of living.

The Government set the national minimum allowance for foster carers annually in April. The increases in April 2023 and the planned above-inflation increases from April 2024 are very welcome, but it is essential that the funding actually reaches foster families. Across the country there is a postcode lottery, with some fostering services paying families significantly below the national minimum allowance. The Fostering Network has found that some services significantly underfund the allowance for an 11 to 15-year-old, for example, by as much as £2,333 per year. I hope that the Minister can update us on what he is doing to ensure that all services offer at least the national minimum allowance, and to ensure proper monitoring of that allowance across the country.

It is important that support for foster families reflects the impact of the last two years on family finances. Although the headline rate of inflation may have fallen, let us remember that food inflation remains high, at more than 9%, while the Government’s mismanagement of the economy has hammered households with rising mortgage and rent costs. The Labour party will always put children and families first. We have already set out plans to help address the cost of living for families. Just some of the costed measures we have announced include acting now to ensure that every family caring for a primary-aged pupil has access to a free breakfast club, and limiting the number of costly branded school uniform items to save families hundreds of pounds through a child’s time at school. What assessment has the Department made of the specific impacts of rising costs on foster families?

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk talked powerfully about the urgent crisis in recruitment and retention of foster families. Worryingly, more than four in 10 foster carers are thinking of leaving fostering. At the same time, fewer and fewer households are registering to become foster carers, and the conversion rate of people who express interest in fostering to actual foster carers is vanishingly small.

We also need diversity in our foster carer network so that families have options for closer matches to their cultures, foods or faiths, which helps a child to feel settled at an anxious time. The Department’s own figures show a 26% decrease in newly registered households since 2019. The same figures show more households leaving fostering during the year than joining, at a time when the number of children in care continues to increase. Without the right placements, more children will end up being placed in homes that do not meet their needs. In 2021, all but six local fostering services reported a shortage in the number of carers they need for their local population.

There is an urgent need for more foster carers who can look after teenagers, large sibling groups, children with complex needs, and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Foster caring is more than simply opening a home to an additional child; it requires skill and dedication. Looked-after children are more likely than other children to have experienced a severe trauma in their lives, such as bereavement, abuse or neglect, and foster carers need to have a good understanding of a wide range of needs.

In response to the independent review of children’s social care led by Josh MacAlister, the Government committed to a nationwide recruitment and retention programme for foster carers. When does the Minister expect to be able to update the House on the progress of pathfinder areas and plans for any wider roll-out across the country?

The challenges facing foster carers and the children they look after must be placed in the context of the wider crisis in children’s social care. The number of children entering the care system continues to rise, but the Government have eroded the support that they need. More than 1,300 Sure Start centres have closed since 2010, while the funding offer to local councils for children’s services has fallen by an estimated 24% since 2010.

Perhaps the Minister will point towards his Department’s family hub programme, but he cannot escape the fact that that programme is funded in only half of all local authority areas. The high turnover in children’s social workers and the loss of experienced staff are creating uncertainty for foster families and those applying to foster. At the same time, the 10 biggest providers of children’s homes and private foster care placements are raking in huge profits from public money, more of which should be spent on the wellbeing of vulnerable children.

Foster carers are a vital part of our children’s social care system. They provide a loving and safe home to tens of thousands of children across the country, but they urgently need better support and recognition for their wider role. I hope that the Minister will set out how the Government will act quickly to ensure that all foster carers are better supported, so that more people who are able to offer a stable and loving home to vulnerable children can be urgently encouraged to take up the very important role of being a foster carer.