Future of foster care consultation

Recruitment of foster carers is key to the success and development of local authority fostering and meeting the needs and rights of children and young people. There are significant recruitment and retention challenges within fostering and also the wider children’s service workforce. Our approach to recruitment, some of which is currently underway, is based on significant engagement over the course of 18 months with key stakeholders and those who represent foster carers. It has five key parts, which are:

• A national recruitment campaign funded by the Scottish Government;
• Targeted national recruitment approaches to recruit diverse foster carers;
• Working with local authorities to develop joint national and local communications including developing a national toolkit for local authorities to use locally;
• Creation of a Foster Scotland brand; and
• Ensuring our online presence is up to date, clear and easy to navigate ensuring that prospective foster carers and current foster carers can find all the information they need easily and quickly.

We are confident that a national campaign should help deliver the following outcomes:

• Increase the number of foster carers recruited in Scotland.
• Contribute to increasing the value and recognition of foster carers and reducing the number of foster carers that retire or de-register.
• Increase the diversity of foster carers in Scotland which will allow for better matching (both locally and according to needs), including Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children.
• Contribute to reducing foster care placement breakdown by having better supported foster carers, allowing for stronger matches and increased placement suitability, and reducing moves for children and young people.
• Support better outcomes for children and young people in care, for example enabling more children to be in a family-based care setting in their own community, and therefore contributing towards the delivery of The Promise by 2030.
• Raise public awareness of foster care, and to help build understanding of the care system.

The Scottish Government has set out fully the challenges within recruitment of foster carers and how at a national level we think we can support the recruitment of foster carers in section 6 of the consultation document.