Foster Care Placements 2023-07-17
2023-07-17
TAGS
Response quality
Questions & Answers
Q1
Direct Answer
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Context
The issue of insufficient foster care placements in the UK, requiring more support for recruitment and retention.
What steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements. I am concerned about the need for more foster carers to ensure that children are placed in stable homes.
We know that we need more foster carers. That is a really important part of our plan, “Stable Homes, Built on Love”, to reform the care system. We are investing £27 million in recruitment and retention over the next two years. We have also increased the national minimum allowance for foster parents by 12.4% as part of those plans.
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Assessment & feedback
Response accuracy
Q2
Partial Answer
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Context
The role of foster carers in improving the health and well-being of looked-after children, highlighting the need to remove bureaucratic barriers.
Does my hon. Friend agree that foster carers can play a vital role in improving the health and wellbeing of a looked-after child, and that we need to encourage more people to go into foster caring by removing unnecessary bureaucratic barriers so that we can build a network of foster carers across the country to improve the life chances of children in care?
This is a big priority for me. Some children end up in children's homes when they should have ended up with foster carers, so we need to recruit more. As I have said, we are making a significant investment in recruitment and retention so that we can keep some of our brilliant, experienced foster carers as well as attracting more into the system.
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Assessment & feedback
Specific measures to remove bureaucratic barriers were not addressed.
Response accuracy