Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to help ensure that those people who (a) adopt, (b) foster or (c) provide kinship care for children receive timely support in respect of their own wellbeing.

Local authorities must appoint an adviser to give advice and information to people affected by adoption, including adoptive parents. The adviser must also signpost appropriate services and give guidance on how those services may be accessed. The Adoption Support Fund is available where children and families are in particular need of help.

Fostering services: national minimum standards (NMS), outlines that fostering service providers must ensure foster carers receive the support and supervision they need in order to care properly for children placed with them. This includes supporting peer support, foster care associations and/or self-help groups for foster carers. It should also include providing foster carers with breaks from caring as appropriate, and effective out of hours advice and support.

The NMS also requires that all foster carers have access to adequate social work and other professional support, information and advice, to enable them to provide consistent, high quality care to the child.

The department funds Fosterline to provide independent, confidential and impartial advice on fostering issues aimed at supporting existing and prospective carers. Fosterline can be contacted on 0800 040 7675 or by visiting their website at: http://www.fosterline.info.

The government issued statutory guidance in 2011 for local authorities about supporting family and friends providing care for children who cannot live with their parents. The guidance states that children and young people should receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare. It explains that support, including financial support, can be provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989. There is no limit on the level of support, including financial support, that local authorities can provide. The local authority should have in place clear eligibility criteria in relation to the provision of support services.

The department also supports kinship carers through a contract with the charity Kinship, which will see us establish up to 100 peer to peer support groups across England by January 2024.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care made a set of recommendations which aim to improve the support kinship carers receive. The department will respond to the review in early 2023.