No National Fee Scheme for Foster Carers
30-06-09
This was to be expected, see Community Care article here:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/29/111964/government-rejects-national-fees-for-foster-carers.html
However, I agree local schemes need to be set in the location where carers operate and (let us not forget) there are other fostering agencies other than local authorities, in both the private and (dwindling) voluntary sectors. Furthermore, the tasks of fostering are vast and carers operate at differing levels of competence. Fees need to be competence based, combined with task and needs to reflect the relationship between the child and carers e.g. kinship carers.
Although perhaps a minority view, I believe still that kinship carers undertake a unique task and it is rarely associated with professional fostering and more akin to following family obligations.
It was ever the case that incoirporating kinship care under fostering was utter folly Most kinship carers will not see themselves as foster carers.
No national registration of foster carers will seriously piss off the GSCC who would have been given the task to regulate foster care. They, of course want to regulate 5the world and his wife and grow as an agency out of all proportion to need, and common sense.
We need not more regulation but less – the GSCC seem however to have lost the plot and would, self serving as they are, like to expand. Gawd help us if they ever did.