Fostering services in England and Wales are in need of radical reform, according to a report published by the think tank, Policy Exchange. The report shows that in some instances severely disadvantaged children are waiting for over a year for a foster placement and that the life chances for many children in the system are appalling.

The report – Fostering Aspirations – notes a 16% increase in the number of children in a foster placement during 2006-2011 and that the needs of children in foster care are becoming more varied and more challenging. Combined with a shortage of carers, this has led to a situation where there are limited foster homes available. Children can be placed with carers inadequately qualified to help them or far away from their birth family. In one case, a child from London was found to be being fostered in Cornwall.

These problems mean that some 48,530 children are now in a care system that is letting many of them down and is in radical need of reform.

The report makes a number of recommendations to increase the number of carers and the quality of the care they provide, including:

• England and Wales should provide professional foster care but should not formally designate foster care as a profession. It is vital to maintain a balance between providing the family home that children in care need but also recognising that foster carers are frequently called upon to do much more now than twenty years ago.
• To ensure clarity and transparency, all foster carers should be paid a year round fee and should be placed on local fee frameworks. The fee should be based on the skills, qualifications and experience the carer has. These local fee frameworks should also provide additional amounts for each week that a carer has a child placed with them. This amount would depend on the needs and characteristics of the child and would be in addition to the current allowance. Fee frameworks would be agreed nationally, but levels of payments set locally by local authorities and independent providers.

Matthew Oakley, co-author of the report, said: “The lack of a stable, loving family affects a child’s future chances in life. We must have high aspirations of what the foster care system can deliver. We desperately need to reform the current foster care system to give some of the most vulnerable children an opportunity that most of us take for granted.”