Steve McCabe
Main Page: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)Department Debates - View all Steve McCabe's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Timpson
I agree that we need to make transferring from one agency to another, or from one local authority to another, as streamlined and as simple as possible. That is why we have changed the regulations to make it easier for new fostering services to access the foster carer’s record, including the training that they have received, and why, more recently, fostering services have also been required to share relevant information about a person’s suitability to foster.
We have seen a 6% rise in the number of approved foster carers, as well as a 9% rise in the number of approved foster placements, but we need to go further and do anything we can to ensure that those who want to foster and want to continue to foster really get the chance to do just that.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I recognise the Minister’s concerns, and I suppose that the issue depends on what the register is intended to achieve, but the Department has had to address issues over the adoption register very similar to those to which he just referred. That register is managed by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. How would a fostering register differ dramatically from the adoption register, on which the Minister has been rightly lavishing praise?
Mr Timpson
There are more than 71,000 approved foster carers, so there is already a scalability issue. We also have a much more deeply entrenched local system in relation to the recruitment of foster carers. That is why we have given the fostering network £250,000 to try to boost recruitment at a local level to try to meet local need, but we also need to do everything that we can to ensure that the latent capacity in fostering across the country is utilised. Hundreds of thousands of people would consider fostering and we need to find them. That is why we are also funding Fosterline—an independent, free advice line—so that people can get the guidance that they need to come forward and, hopefully, foster.