Surrey County Council's new plan to get kids out of children’s homes into foster families
Surrey County Council is aiming to move more looked after vulnerable children living in residential children’s homes into foster families.
The authority believes joining the Big Fostering Partnership, which helps to recruit foster carers, will allow it to get around 22 children out of homes into long-term foster placements by January 2024, giving these kids better outcomes in life.
At the end of last year, Surrey had 140 of its 1,080 looked after children in regulated residential placements including children’s homes, residential schools, care homes, parenting assessment units and secure units.
Councillor Chris Townsend (Ashtead Independent, working with Ashtead Residents), vice-chair of the children and families select committee, said: “We’re finding it very difficult to get foster parents in Surrey.
“Any organisation we can join that’s trying to improve foster care her can only be a positive thing.”
The authority says this could also reduce its children’s services placement budget by £5million over the next four years, since residential provision is more than three times the price of a step-down foster placement – on average a £3,200 difference every week.
Conservative councillor Clare Curran, cabinet member for children and families, said homes “can offer intensive, specialist support for young people who need it” but after that period of support, the children should “step-down” into a foster family.
She told cabinet last week: “We’re really keen to develop this practice in Surrey, and we feel that the best option that is available is to work with an external partner with a track record in this area to embed step-down practice in Surrey and scale up our own capacity quickly.
“This will also provide an opportunity to learn what works well and prepare the future development of our own in-house option.”
Cabinet agreed to join the Big Fostering Partnership, which brings together the expertise of the UK’s biggest fostering agency – the National Fostering Group – with a number of local authorities and The Big Issue, aims to ‘step-down’ children and sustain their foster placements for two years.
The council has a statutory duty to secure enough accommodation in the local area to meet the needs of Surrey children.
A report to cabinet last week from Rachael Wardell, executive director for children, families and lifelong learning, said the council had made progress on this during 2021/22.
But at the end of 2021 still only 54 per cent of children were placed within in Surrey and two thirds within 20 miles of the county.