NAFP statement: IFA foster carers in Wales

Fostering recruitment should increase and add to the pool of foster carers to respond to the national shortage of foster carers. Any marketing that encourages foster carers to transfer from one fostering service to another does not achieve this and could result in instability for children in foster care. 

In our view, Foster Wales have done exactly this in their recent fostering recruitment campaign for local authorities. In addition, local authorities directly approaching foster carers approved by independent fostering agencies (IFA) and encouraging them to transfer to a local authority with a false commentary that the independent fostering sector will no longer exist is unhelpful, inaccurate and far removed from the spirit of working in partnership which NAFP has worked hard to establish with the Welsh Government and local authorities.

IFAs have been consistently shown to offer overwhelmingly high quality care to children, excellent support to foster carers and value for money to local authorities. Large, medium and small private sector and not-for-profit IFAs have offered foster care to children when local authorities were not able to do so. It is often the case that IFAs deliver their services better than local authorities, and this is one of the reasons why they are so in demand from local authorities. IFAs have made significant investment into the children’s social care sector which has experienced declining central government funding over a number of years. Children and local authorities need IFAs and will continue to need them for the foreseeable future.

We believe that most IFAs will comply with the transformations required under Welsh Government programmes to ‘eliminate private profit’ and in our many discussions with them over several years, it is clear to us that they are taking this programme seriously, are keeping foster carers fully informed and their placements for children remain stable in this uncertain and sometimes hostile environment. Some local authorities have spoken directly with IFA foster carers, without any liaison with the IFA, causing the carers unnecessary concern and anxiety. This activity is regrettable and, we believe there may have been misuse of foster carers’ information under General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

The language of ‘eliminate’ was poorly chosen by Welsh Government in our view to describe the people and organisations who have brought so many positives to the lives of children in foster care. 

Foster care, and the care system, often receives negative commentary in the media. We should be doing all we can to show that foster care works really well for most children most of the time. Negative marketing from any part of our foster care sector only reinforces public misconceptions that the care system is ‘broken’. We believe Foster Wales may have damaged the image of foster care with their messaging, potentially serving to put more people off becoming foster carers.

NAFP has made considerable efforts to work closely with Welsh Government, local authorities and IFAs in the implementation of this programme. The planning and implementation of the Foster Wales and local authority campaigns, whilst we were working alongside them in good faith, undermines the positive partnership we have aimed for. We hope Foster Wales and local authorities will learn lessons on working together to enable us all to move forward - the priority for us all should be stability for our children living in foster care.