Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether (a) his Department and (b) each of its arms length bodies offers employees who are foster carers (i) flexible working, (ii) paid time off for (A) training and (B) settling a new child into their home and (iii) other support.

The Department is keen to encourage employees to become foster carers, and to support those already providing foster care or care for their family and friends by providing time off where necessary. Fostering related leave, which forms part of our special leave provision, can be planned or unplanned, and may be paid or unpaid, and our current provision is as follows:

• leave during an assessment for approval, specifically discretionary special paid leave for up to five days in a 12-month period, which can be taken in whole or half days;
• additional leave during the approval process or when child is in placement, comprising of an additional five days of paid or unpaid leave in a 12-month period at a line manager’s discretion, for example, for meetings, training, unforeseen emergencies relating to their fostering role, and to accommodate an emergency placement, among other reasons; and
• additional leave at the start of a planned permanent placement, which is additional discretionary special paid leave for up to 10 days in a 12-month period. If both parents are employed, one parent would receive up to 10 days and the other up to five days.

In addition, foster carers are also entitled to the same statutory and departmental dependents and carers related leave provisions as for all other employees with caring responsibilities. These being:

• three days of paid emergency carers leave over a rolling one-year period, with discretion to allow paid leave up to a maximum of five days;
• emergency leave for dependants that provides one day of special leave to allow an employee to attend hospital when a dependant is admitted to accident and emergency;
• the statutory right to take up to a week’s unpaid leave in any 12-month period to provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need, with the leave being able to be taken in half days, full days, or as consecutive days;
• paid bereavement leave of up to five days, which can be granted to an employee following the death of a dependent, although there is a limit of five days for this type of leave, there is discretion to exceed this limit where circumstances are particularly traumatic, for example the death of a child; and
• a carer’s passport, to enable a carer and their manager to document the flexibilities needed to support the carer in combining caring and work.

All employees, regardless of caring responsibilities, are entitled to the same flexible working provisions. While flexible working is discretionary and isn't an automatic right, such arrangements provide employees with some degree of flexibility over how, where, and when they work. Some frequently used arrangements are outlined below, although this list is not exhaustive:

• part-time, for those contracted to work fewer hours than standard full-time hours;
• compressed hours, which are standard working hours covered in fewer working days;
• job sharing, an arrangement where a job is split between two;
• part-year or term time working, where employees work fewer than 365 days per year and have contractual periods of attendance and non-attendance, for example, a set period of non-attendance for school holidays; and
• flexi-time system, which allows employees using the Department's flexi-time system to vary their start and finish times, vary the time and length of their lunch break, and take time off.

Foster carers working at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Food Standards Agency have access to flexible working arrangements, paid time off, and additional support for training and settling a new child into their home.

All employees at NHS England, the NHS Business Services Authority, the Health Research Authority, the Care Quality Commission, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, NHS Resolution, the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and the UK Health and Security Agency have access to flexible working. These arm’s length bodies have no specific provisions for foster carers, but rather access to general carers and special leave policies.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellent, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, NHS Resolutions, the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and the UK Health and Security Agency work with foster carers on a case-by-case basis to accommodate reasonable requests. The Human Tissue Authority does not have any specific provisions for foster carers.