Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress he has made on (a) increasing the number of and (b) improving support for foster carers since the Fostering better outcomes report published in July 2018.

‘Fostering Better Outcomes’ set out our commitment to improving the lives of children in foster care, including making sure there are sufficient foster parents to meet the needs of children, and that foster parents have access to the support they need. Whilst achieving this is a long-term strategy and requires everyone in the system to work together to bring about real improvements for foster parents and the children for whom they care, we have already made significant progress towards our commitments, including the following points:

• We have undertaken a digital ‘discovery phase’ and have now moved to an ‘alpha’ testing phase, exploring how information and support can be made more accessible to current and prospective foster parents.
• We are developing the ‘fostering trailblazers’ concept focusing on how we can best identify, evaluate and share examples of best practise.
• The annual uplift to the national minimum allowance for foster parents was published in March. A communication has been sent to all Directors of Children’s Services making clear that this is the very minimum that we expect foster parents to be paid.
• We have extended the Department for Education’s contract with Fosterline in order that current and prospective foster parents can continue to access free independent advice, advocacy and support that they tell us they find so valuable.
• We have worked with the Fostering Network to strengthen the Foster Carer Charter, which clearly details the support foster parents can expect. We continue to encourage all fostering services to commit publicly to the charter.
• Following our £3.8 million investment through the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme, we will share the evaluation of the Mockingbird Family Model project, to enable more fostering providers to understand the benefits and value of peer support to foster parents in order to develop their own systems.
• We have invited bids from new or existing fostering partnerships to develop or expand collaborative approaches to sufficiency planning and commissioning of fostering placements, using needs analysis and innovative delivery models.