Bid for ‘professional’ pay for foster carers

Bid for ‘professional’ pay for foster carers

The Children, Young People, Education and Skills Department wants to develop what it is calling an ‘intensive fostering scheme’ which provides some carers with extra support and payment to enable them to offer homes to young people with complex needs.

A bid for funding for the scheme has been included within the Government Plan, which is due to be lodged and debated later this year.

According to Susan Devlin, group director of Children’s Services, foster carers working under the scheme would need to be paid enough so that they would not have to do another job and could dedicate their time to looking after and working with the children.

Giving evidence at a hearing of the Care of Children in Jersey review panel, Children’s Minister Sam Mézec said the matter was ‘on the agenda’.

‘There are bids that we have put into the Government Plan to try to get some extra funding to support people who want to become foster carers,’ he said.

Mrs Devlin, meanwhile, added that the department wanted to develop an ‘intensive scheme’ for professional foster carers who would need to be paid under a new fee structure.

‘That fee has to be sufficient that they don’t have to work because the needs of a child going into an intensive fostering scheme are of such a level that actually you need to be available, it is essentially a 24-hour job,’ she said.

‘You might be helping out at school; you might be helping out with health needs, whatever. So we need to make sure that the fee structure allows people to be at home working with the child or children.’

She added: ‘One of the other things that makes these schemes a success is the level of support. So while Children’s Services does have a 24/7 on call service for emergencies, foster carers are probably best served by someone who understands a fostering task in greater depth. So we are looking at the on-call support arrangements that could be put in place.’

Mrs Devlin said the intensive scheme would provide an alternative to other specialised services and would be backed up by ‘wraparound’ support so there is a ‘real team around the child in a family-based placement’.

‘We know that children do best by and large, although there are some small exceptions, in a family placement, so that is what we need to get to.’

The hearing was told there are currently approximately 90 looked-after children in Jersey, around 20 of them are currently in care outside of the Island. Looked-after children are those under the care of the government, including those in foster care, in residential homes and, in some cases, those living with other relatives.

Two years ago the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry report recommended a thorough review of fostering in the Island and found that there was a lack of support, guidance and training for foster parents and that communication between them and Children’s Services was often inadequate.

The Island has also struggled in recent years to find enough people willing to become foster parents.

Last year Children’s Commissioner Deborah McMillan – who was appointed following another of the inquiry panel’s recommendations – said it was time to explore paying foster carers properly, as in the UK.

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