Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 94: 94: Before Clause 29, insert the following new Clause— ““Registration of foster carers with the General Social Care Council (1) Section 55(2) of the Care Standards Act 2000 (c. 14) (interpretation) is amended as follows. (2) After subsection (2)(d) insert— ““(e) is a foster parent;””.”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 94, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 96, 97 and 98. Amendment No. 96 is tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and I am grateful to her for agreeing to group it with my amendments, not only because it will help us to save time but because without her amendment, to which I have added my name, Amendment No. 98 would not be quite so possible. Amendment No. 94 relates to the registration of foster carers. Foster carers have long called for the introduction of a national registration scheme for them through the General Social Care Council, as is available for many other members of the children’s workforce. Registration would provide a major boost to the status of foster carers and improve the respect and treatment that they receive from other workers. Registration would also allow for the introduction of a code of conduct, for expectations regarding continuing professional development and improving the safeguarding of children, and for increased portability of approval within the children’s workforce. Taken all round, it would be a good measure. The GSCC is very willing to have this additional group of members, and it would improve the professionalisation of foster carers, which we would all like to see. Amendment No. 97 is about responsibility delegated to foster carers by the local authority. The 2002 fostering regulations require all fostering services to enter into a foster placement agreement, which should include the circumstances in which it is necessary to obtain in advance the approval of the responsible authority for the child to take part in school trips or to stay overnight away from the foster parent’s home, but not for other everyday issues. It is important to note that there is no standard formula for how a foster placement agreement is supposed to operate. According to people whom I have spoken to on Fosterline, most foster carers would not be aware that it existed, and there is minimal enforcement of it. However, the key point is that there is massive confusion about what responsibility local authorities can delegate to the foster parent and how they should do so. The problems of overnight stays were massively improved by the issuing of statutory guidance. The Government could perhaps now look at how foster placement agreements work and what circumstances they cover in the review of the fostering regulations next year. It could be that a commitment from the Government to produce guidance under Section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 might be an appropriate way of filling in this gap. Foster parents need to know what they can decide about in everyday little matters relating to their foster child and what they have to refer back to the local authority. It cannot be very efficient for foster carers to keep running back to the local authority and thereby causing a delay on matters on which they could easily and safely take the decision themselves. I would be most grateful if the Minister could tell us whether there is an intention to look at this in the review that is coming up. I want to leave Amendment No. 96 to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. However, I am glad that she is trying to split, very transparently, the actual fee that is paid to the foster carer for doing the work of fostering the child and the allowance that is paid to cover the expenses of looking after that child. Amendment No. 98 is about making sure that if a foster parent is accused of an allegation they can continue to receive the fee, because in those circumstances the child will have been taken away from them so they are no longer entitled to the allowance. That is natural justice. It is about being innocent until proven guilty. The possibility of an allegation being made against them is a constant fear for foster carers. Due to the nature of the children and young people placed with them, and the often fraught relationships between foster carers and birth parents, unfounded allegations are, sadly, a regular occurrence. An allegation is often used as a way of trying to break a placement, or is due to a misunderstanding of everyday behaviour which, before the child entered care, had been a prelude to abuse. Surveys have shown that around a third of all foster carers will face an allegation during their fostering career, and the vast majority turn out to be unfounded. Government timescales for the resolution of allegations, set out in the Working Together guidance, desirable though they are, are routinely being missed in allegation cases against foster carers. Working Together states that 80 per cent of allegations should be resolved in one month, 90 per cent should be resolved in three months and all cases should be resolved in a year. Research by Swain in 2006 has shown that 50 per cent of allegation cases last longer than three months and one in 10 last longer than a year—in some cases several years. To compound matters, in a third of all allegation cases where some or all children have been removed—which is really the de facto suspension of that foster carer from their job—almost all foster carers have their fostering income cut, and 46 per cent have their income stopped completely. Research has also shown that 60 per cent of foster carers facing allegations are not receiving the access to independent support during an allegation that they desperately need and which they are required to receive under the current national minimum standards for fostering services. The amendment would protect foster carers from the immense financial hardship that can accompany an allegation investigation, and it would give local authorities greater incentive to resolve investigations within an acceptable timescale. If they are continuing to have to pay the very small fees that some foster carers get, it certainly makes it a very good thing that they speed up their investigations. We really need to keep these foster carers, and if there is an ongoing case against an innocent person, for all the reasons that I have outlined, they will obviously have lost the allowance because they have lost the child. If they lose the fee as well, they will have to get another job. We are desperately short of foster parents, and we are paying them only a very small amount. It is against natural justice that they should be seen as guilty because their retention fee—as I would call it—has been taken away from them while the allegation is heard. If we can reach the target of 80 per cent resolved within a month, the payments that we are talking about will be very small. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that we will not lose a lot of foster carers because of financial expediency—they have no income and have to get another job. We will lose them, and that would be extremely sad. Amendment No. 98 would be possible if the split sought by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, were put into place. I beg to move.