Foster Care: Coronavirus

(asked on 2nd June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that (a) the fostering workforce and (b) retention levels in that workforce are supported during and after the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 8th June 2020

It is vital that we continue to support foster families both during and after the COVID-19 outbreak, to keep them together and continue to provide safety and stability for vulnerable children. We understand the pressures that foster families have been under during this difficult time and our priority has been to protect foster carers.

We have ensured that foster carers are able to request personal protective equipment should they need it from their local authorities and that children in foster care are eligible to receive free IT devices and equipment to support their education.

In addition, the government has provided a national scheme to offer supermarket vouchers, worth £15 a week, to families of children who receive benefits-related free school meals. This is to cover the cost of meals for children who are currently unable to attend school.

The department continues to fund Fosterline, an independent advice service for current and prospective foster carers, to provide impartial and free-to-access support. We are working closely with sector organisations and fostering services to better understand the challenges currently faced by foster families, and the ways in which the needs of these families can be met going forward. We also want to support fostering services to build capacity to ensure that we have enough of the right carers in the right places as we emerge from the COVID-19 outbreak.

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