Parent and Child Fostering: How Covid Has Affected Recruitment in Caring for Children and Their Families
Every year hundreds of parents get placed into care arrangements alongside their children. Parent and Child fostering traditionally supported teenage mums, but increasingly a broader spectrum of parents benefit from the service when additional support needs are identified by social services.
Designed to improve the long term outcomes for children, Parent and Child fostering aims to increase the chances of keeping vulnerable families together. The children’s needs are at the heart of the placement as their parent(s) receive parental coaching or extra support in the care of their children.
That’s why it’s such a concern that at the end of 2020, after an initial healthy year of enquiries, Ofsted announced that foster carer applications had decreased by 10%. That was despite the number of enquiries going slightly up.
Many simply changed their minds, and it’s hard to disregard COVID as a factor. 2020 was a year that saw redundancies rise, peaking between September and November - overall, 370,000 people were redundant last year, the highest figure since records began in 1992.
Christine Webster, Recruitment Officer for Anchor Foster Care for five years, paints a similar picture to the data: “The last lockdown after Christmas was a game changer, enquiries were extremely low, even in areas where we’ve had consistent and long term success.”
Job security and changes to family life
It’s widely been reported that furlough had saved a lot of people from redundancy, and whilst redundancy rates are falling, unemployment is still higher than at the start of the pandemic. Christine explains that in the context of care, particularly in a family setting, the ability to become a carer often relies on one partner dedicating their time to fostering, while the other partner works to keep a flow of income. Furlough has helped families survive, but long term job security has been shaky, and this has impacted how many foster carers are in a position to help.
“It’s been a long year for people. We were finding that family circumstances had changed. On furlough people are earning 20% less. You can’t underestimate how much that impacts family life.”
“There’s so much pressure and it’s really affecting relationships. Lockdown and social distancing means families have been forced together for long periods of time. Some couples are breaking up and that must have been so hard during a time of isolation. It’s bound to have affected people’s ability to foster.”
This anecdotal assessment is backed up by data. At the end of last year, the BBC reported 122% increase in enquiries for legal separation in the UK, and predicted that it had not yet peaked.
Is Parent and Child fostering restricted to a family setting?
Whilst discussing who usually takes on Parent and Child fostering, Christine said many couples participate in this type of care, and whilst typically it’s the woman who cares, whilst the male partner works, she has some carers who are men, and the breadwinners are their wives. This was heartening to hear.
But it’s important for potential carers to know that it’s not just couples who foster in family settings. One of the most interesting points Christine made was how single women fit into the care system. Many of these women’s children have grown up and left home. They’re not relying on lodgers for income, and tend to have the time to dedicate themselves to the parent and child. “Quite often people think you have to be a family to foster, and actually you don’t. Single carers work with Anchor Foster Care too, and with no partner to worry about, they’re free to dedicate their time however they like. They have the time and capacity, and enjoy taking the role of parental coach, it can be incredibly rewarding for both parties.”
It’s this reward that tends to motivate those who can accommodate a parent and child (or children) and bring them into their care. With many of the parents themselves having grown up in care, they are in need of the sort of guidance that young parents would usually receive from their families. Foster carers are therefore charged with the legacy of parenting that the child will continue to receive afterwards, as well as the way they will go on to understand the concept of parental care themselves as adults.
What carers impart is care along with a legacy of knowledge, which can be particularly fulfilling for carers whose children have grown up. It’s really a way of being able to give sanctuary to those most vulnerable at a time of national uncertainty, a way of being able to directly affect the life outcomes of both child and parent.
Urgent need for Foster Carers
Christine’s assessment of the situation is that while the number of carers have reduced, the need for carers continues to grow: “At the moment it’s still early days. A lot of children and families have been under the radar over the last 15 months, and not getting the support they need. That includes those who have never come into contact with social services - there are many cases that we’re only just now realising.”
Want to know more?
If you’re interested in learning more about Parent and Child Fostering, see last week’s blog. You can also read more on the dedicated section of our website. If you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of caring, get in touch. Otherwise, stay up to date with our series on the Parent and Child niche, by checking back next week for our next blog.
