half of children in care have been diagnosed with a mental disorder;
Educational outcomes are appalling, with only around a third of children in care achieving the expected Key Stage 2 level in English and Maths (compared to 74 per cent in the general population of children);
Twice as many 19 year olds who were previously in the care system are now not in education, employment or training (33 per cent) than for the general 19-year-old population (16 per cent); and over the longer-term, over a quarter of all adults serving custodial sentences previously spent time in care and almost half of all under 21 year olds in contact with the criminal justice system have spent time in care.
It is a tragedy that the 48,530 children currently in foster care in England are at risk of poor outcomes and life chances.
(Harber and Oakley, 2012, p8)
At the time of writing some aspects of the Government's ‘improving foster care’ initiative had come to fruition, but others, such as guidance on long-term foster care and commissioning of foster care placements, were still being developed. ‘Fostering for adoption’, a development introduced in the Children and Families Bill 2013, is already having an impact on, and implications for, fostering services (Department of Education, 2013a; Simmonds, 2013).
There are a number of texts that cover law relevant to social work, children looked after and foster care (Brammer, 2010; Davis, 2010; Laird, 2010; Lawson, 2011a; Brayne and Carr, 2013). There are also a number of best practice guides that include the legal and policy framework for specific areas of foster care. These include: fostering panels (Borthwick and Lord, 2011); foster carer reviews (Brown, 2011); parent and child fostering (Adams and Dibben, 2011) and fostering for adoption (Simmonds, 2013). Specific areas of the legal and policy framework for foster care will be re-visited in more detail throughout the book where relevant.
Lawson lists the legislation and guidance relevant to foster care in England (Lawson, 2011a, pp9–11) and reminds us that the regulations, statutory guidance and NMS are not just relevant to staff of fostering services: it is essential that everyone who works with children and young people in foster care is aware of what they say (2011a, p9). Knowledge of the law can enable social workers to facilitate good quality foster care, and inform them about how to use the law as leverage, to ensure foster carers, foster children and their families receive the services, safeguards and quality of support to which they are entitled by law.
In the UK, legislation about the welfare of children and young people focuses on the best interests of children. This is stated in primary legislation in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, the Children Act (Scotland) 1995, the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 all state that children's welfare has to be the paramount consideration. This also has to be the case for foster care. The welfare of a specific foster child, or a hypothetical foster child that might be placed with a foster carer in the future, has to be the paramount consideration for social workers.
This Chapter Covers
The legal and policy framework in which social work and foster care take place. It sets out the current legal and policy landscapes for foster care. This legal landscape is an ever-changing terrain and the chapter reflects it as it was at the time of writing. The foster care Standards, Regulations and Guidance are briefly introduced, as well as other relevant secondary legislation.
The specific detail of each document is not covered, but rather the chapter signposts the reader to documents with which they should be familiar, if they are social workers working with foster carers or foster children.
The chapter starts by considering the UKNSFC (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999a) and the related Code of Practice on the recruitment, assessment, approval, training, management and support of foster carers (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999b). Both these documents apply to the UK as a whole, but are not legally binding. However, although now dated, they still offer direction regarding best practice in foster care.
The UK National Standards for Foster Care, and the Code of Practice
These two publications apply to all four UK nations (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999a; UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999b). They were the first attempt, in the UK, to create a Code of Practice and National Standards for foster care. Mehmet, writing about the UK National Standards and Code of Practice, wrote:
These two documents set out to establish what was to be expected from everyone involved in foster care, the fostering teams, children's social workers and carers. The work of the Joint Working Party on Foster Care which produced these documents opened the way for Standards in foster care to be recognised across the United Kingdom.
(Mehmet, 2005, p3)
The English, Scottish and Welsh Governments subsequently published their own national standards for foster care (Department of Education, 2011a; The Scottish Executive, 2005; Welsh Assembly Government, 2003). Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all developed their own Code of Practice (Wales Code of Practice Working Group, 1999; The Scottish Executive and the Fostering Network, 2004; Department of Health and Social Service, 1999). Although the UKNSFC and Code of Practice were not legally binding, they did in effect establish best practice guidance in foster care. They remain helpful detailed documents about foster care and social work practice and are worth practitioners’ and social work students’ attention.
Policy, Standards, Regulation and Guidance Relating to Foster Care in General
The documents below are introduced to the reader in a, hopefully, logical order, but not necessarily chronologically. I start with the White Paper, Care Matters, as this set the tone for the foster care reform agenda that followed. I then move on to the Standards, Regulation and Guidance because these, taken together, are the bedrock of the legal framework for foster care.
Care Matters: Time for Change
The White Paper Care Matters, published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007, sought to improve the lots of, and futures for, children in public care. Central to this agenda was improving the quality and stability of foster care and the status of foster carers. Foster carers are central to many children and young people's experience of care. It is essential that we value and support them and ensure that they are properly equipped with the necessary range of skills (Department for Education and Skills, 2007, pp8–9). One initiative related to this was the Children's Workforce Development Council's (CWDC) creation in 2007 of the Training, Support and Development Standards for Foster Care (TSDS). When the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government came to power in 2010, and subsequently the CWDC was abolished, the TSDS were, as a result, adopted by the Department of Education, and Guidance was re-issued in 2012 by the Department of Education.
The Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards
The Department of Education published the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards (NMS) in 2011 under Section 23 of the Care Standards Act 2000. The NMS set out the expectations for the standards that must be met by fostering services (Department of Education, 2011a; Dunster, 2011; Lawson, 2011a). There are 31 Standards, which include child-focused Standards (Standards 1–12), as well as Standards for the fostering service (Standards 13–31). The Standards for the fostering service include some subjects covered in the following chapters of this book including: recruiting and assessing foster carers (Standard 13); fostering
