Social Work and Foster Care. Helen Cosis Brown
England (Lawson, 2011a, pp9–11) and reminds us that the regulations, statutory guidance and NMS are not just relevant to staff of fostering services: it is essential that everyone who works with children and young people in foster care is aware of what they say (2011a, p9). Knowledge of the law can enable social workers to facilitate good quality foster care, and inform them about how to use the law as leverage, to ensure foster carers, foster children and their families receive the services, safeguards and quality of support to which they are entitled by law.
In the UK, legislation about the welfare of children and young people focuses on the best interests of children. This is stated in primary legislation in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, the Children Act (Scotland) 1995, the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 all state that children's welfare has to be the paramount consideration. This also has to be the case for foster care. The welfare of a specific foster child, or a hypothetical foster child that might be placed with a foster carer in the future, has to be the paramount consideration for social workers.
This Chapter Covers
The legal and policy framework in which social work and foster care take place. It sets out the current legal and policy landscapes for foster care. This legal landscape is an ever-changing terrain and the chapter reflects it as it was at the time of writing. The foster care Standards, Regulations and Guidance are briefly introduced, as well as other relevant secondary legislation.
The specific detail of each document is not covered, but rather the chapter signposts the reader to documents with which they should be familiar, if they are social workers working with foster carers or foster children.
The chapter starts by considering the UKNSFC (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999a) and the related Code of Practice on the recruitment, assessment, approval, training, management and support of foster carers (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999b). Both these documents apply to the UK as a whole, but are not legally binding. However, although now dated, they still offer direction regarding best practice in foster care.
The UK National Standards for Foster Care, and the Code of Practice
These two publications apply to all four UK nations (UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999a; UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care, 1999b). They were the first attempt, in the UK, to create a Code of Practice and National Standards for foster care. Mehmet, writing about the UK National Standards and Code of Practice, wrote:
These two documents set out to establish what was to be expected from everyone involved in foster care, the fostering teams, children's social workers and carers. The work of the Joint Working Party on Foster Care which produced these documents opened the way for Standards in foster care to be recognised across the United Kingdom.
(Mehmet, 2005, p3)
The English, Scottish and Welsh Governments subsequently published their own national standards for foster care (Department of Education, 2011a; The Scottish Executive, 2005; Welsh Assembly Government, 2003). Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all developed their own Code of Practice (Wales Code of Practice Working Group, 1999; The Scottish Executive and the Fostering Network, 2004; Department of Health and Social Service, 1999). Although the UKNSFC and Code of Practice were not legally binding, they did in effect establish best practice guidance in foster care. They remain helpful detailed documents about foster care and social work practice and are worth practitioners’ and social work students’ attention.
Policy, Standards, Regulation and Guidance Relating to Foster Care in General
The documents below are introduced to the reader in a, hopefully, logical order, but not necessarily chronologically. I start with the White Paper, Care Matters, as this set the tone for the foster care reform agenda that followed. I then move on to the Standards, Regulation and Guidance because these, taken together, are the bedrock of the legal framework for foster care.
Care Matters: Time for Change
The White Paper Care Matters, published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007, sought to improve the lots of, and futures for, children in public care. Central to this agenda was improving the quality and stability of foster care and the status of foster carers. Foster carers are central to many children and young people's experience of care. It is essential that we value and support them and ensure that they are properly equipped with the necessary range of skills (Department for Education and Skills, 2007, pp8–9). One initiative related to this was the Children's Workforce Development Council's (CWDC) creation in 2007 of the Training, Support and Development Standards for Foster Care (TSDS). When the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government came to power in 2010, and subsequently the CWDC was abolished, the TSDS were, as a result, adopted by the Department of Education, and Guidance was re-issued in 2012 by the Department of Education.
The Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards
The Department of Education published the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards (NMS) in 2011 under Section 23 of the Care Standards Act 2000. The NMS set out the expectations for the standards that must be met by fostering services (Department of Education, 2011a; Dunster, 2011; Lawson, 2011a). There are 31 Standards, which include child-focused Standards (Standards 1–12), as well as Standards for the fostering service (Standards 13–31). The Standards for the fostering service include some subjects covered in the following chapters of this book including: recruiting and assessing foster carers (Standard 13); fostering panels (Standard 14); learning and development of foster carers (Standard 20); supervision and support of foster carers (Standard 21); handling allegations (Standard 22); and placements plans and their review (Standard 31).
Fostering Services (England) Regulations
These Regulations were published by the Department of Education in 2011 (Department of Education, 2011b; Dunster, 2011; Lawson, 2011a). They set out the regulatory framework for foster care in England and, pertinent to social work and foster care, cover: the assessment and approval of foster carers; foster carer reviews; termination of foster carers’ approval; and fostering panels. The Independent Review Mechanism's (IRM) relationship to foster carers’ approval, review, the fostering panel and the fostering service is also noted. These Regulations, as they related to assessment and approval of foster carers, were amended in 2013 by the Department of Education (Department of Education, 2013b).
Assessment and Approval of Foster Carers: Amendments to the Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations
The Amendments (Department of Education, 2013b) set out the new two-stage process for the assessment of prospective foster carers, which is elaborated upon in Chapter 4 of this book, as well as a number of miscellaneous matters including: the sharing of information for the purposes of foster carer or adopter assessments; the IRM; the usual fostering limit; reviews and terminations of approval of foster carers; and the role of the Agency Decision Maker (ADM).
The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 4: Fostering Services
The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 4 (HM Government, 2011), taken with the NMS (Department of Education, 2011a) and the Fostering Service (England) Regulations (Department of Education, 2011b), form the regulatory framework for fostering services in England (Dunster, 2011; Lawson, 2011a). Volume 4 provides the detail of what is expected of good quality foster care. Sections of this volume will be revisited in forthcoming chapters in this book, for example, what is meant by ‘delegated authority’, and what this means for social work with foster carers (HM Government, 2011, p15).
The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 2: Care Planning, Placement and Case Review 2010
HM