News

The world of private fostering is one ruled by ad hoc agreements and unsupervised arrangements. It is also a world of which social services and government have little knowledge. Terry Philpot explores a history of indifference and argues for action on private fostering to avoid deaths such as that of Victoria Climbie.

Successive governments have had a standard reply to complaints that the law on private fostering needs strengthening - what we have on the statute book, they say, is sufficient; the problem is that local authorities are lax in implementing it. There is much truth in the second claim; when local authorities do anything, most do the bare minimum. Almost all give very low priority to private fostering. But even were they to shake themselves up, to whom would they offer services?

The endemic problem with private fostering is how little we know. A child is considered to be privately fostered when living for 28 days or more with someone whom the law does not recognise as a relative or someone with a parental responsibility. A relative, then, is a parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt or uncle.

In 1988 the then Department of Health and Social Security estimated that there were 2,127 privately fostered children in England and Wales and said that the numbers were falling off progressively. Everyone else in the field took the opposite view - that the numbers were growing. This was partly evidenced by the increase in advertisements for private foster carers then published in Nursery World. The Department of Health stopped collecting statistics because they were inaccurate in 1991. Yet in the same year the now defunct African Family Advisory Service (Afas) produced the most reliable (indeed, the only reliable) statistics on the basis of a very careful survey of 12 local authorities. It estimated that there were 6,000 to 9,000 privately fostered children throughout the country. However, Afas was concerned with black (mainly West African) children who form the majority of such children.

The Utting report in 1997¹ reckoned that there were 11,000 private foster placements. Earlier this year the Social Services Inspectorate, on the basis of no new evidence, put the figure at 10,000. At the same time Denise Platt, the chief inspector, referred to "the estimated 8,000-10,000". The SSI also said that 50 per cent of placements were unnotified although notification is a legal obligation on parents and carers. Where this percentage came from is anyone's guess - indeed, it must be anyone's guess because no one knows how many children are looked after in this way.

Ask a local authority how many children are privately fostered in its area and the figure quoted will be that of notified placements, which tells us nothing useful at all. Indeed, when the Association of Directors of Social Services surveyed its members earlier this year, only 41 per cent (71) responded and only 48 of those said that they were recording numbers. The number of cases ranged from 0 to 50 with an average of seven across the 47 social services departments offering figures. Unsurprisingly, the association stated that no conclusions could be drawn.²

The 1993 SSI inspections³ had said that no true figures could be arrived at and this year's (as yet unpublished inspections) are expected to say the same.

The commitment of the 18 local authorities who told the ADSS that they had an officer with a specific responsibility for the subject varies enormously. For example, when I spoke to the officers, one confused independent and private fostering, one said that the numbers could not justify a service, most said they had other priorities, and there were others who proved impossible to track down.

One local authority that offers no services at all told the DoH that private fostering work was being undertaken by a new voluntary project. It had not consulted the project, which had not started the work it planned to do, and even if it had, the project would not have had the powers or legal responsibilities of the authority.

Little is known about the children, their parents or those who care for them. Black children make up the majority of privately fostered children but others include those who have left the family home after a dispute; children at language schools; children at boarding schools who do not return home in the holidays; and those on exchange visits. The Utting report referred to private fostering as "a honey pot for abusers". There have been cases of abuse but only in the most extreme cases can social services departments remove children. They are required only to satisfy themselves of the child's welfare. What that often means in practice was summed up by one social worker who said: "It was hellish trying to come to terms with what was good enough when something had to be bad enough to remove the children."

Black children are typically cared for by white carers in all-white areas. They become detached from parents and their heritage and some parents have lost their children when residence or adoption orders have been made in favour of their carers.

There are, however, a few isolated areas of good practice. Hampshire has a long-standing interest in the field, as does Swindon. Gloucestershire offers an example of what can be done by even one person - Brendan McGrath, its private fostering co-ordinator - with social services support and commitment. Only in the post for three years, his cases have risen from 11 to 224. Replicate that across the country and we would be moving toward credible numbers and good practice.

But government complacency has abetted the indifference of local authorities. Successive governments have resisted calls for private foster carers to be registered and said that local authorities should use the (inadequate) legislation.

Governments have also stated that the prime responsibility for safeguarding the welfare of children is that of parents. That this statement was last made in connection with the death of Victoria Climbie4 is not merely tasteless but ignores the obvious fact that even the best intentioned parents - and ignoring those who may live abroad - cannot gain access to police records, or know whether their child's carer has had her own children removed by the local authority, or has been rejected as a local authority foster carer. A promise of an awareness campaign by chief inspector of social services Denise Platt produced a leaflet for professionals this year.

The government pumped £380m into Quality Protects over three years. But one of the few recommendations from the Utting report, from which Quality Protects sprang, which the government refused to implement was the call for registration of private foster carers.

In 1997, in the wake of a television expos‚ of private fostering, Felicity Collier, chief executive of British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, states: "We cannot wait for a tragedy to happen." But we did, and now the Laming inquiry is looking into the circumstances that led Victoria Climbie to her horrific death. Registration might conceivably have saved Victoria.

Whatever other conclusions Lord Laming and his team reach, it is important that in the welter of issues that surround her death, Victoria's status as a privately fostered child should not be lost.

¹ Sir William Utting, People Like Us: The Report of the Review of the Safeguards for Children Living Away from Home, The Stationery Office, 1997

² ADSS, ADSS Survey February 2001: Local Authorities and Private Fostering, ADSS, 2001

³ DoH, Signposts: Findings from the National Inspection of Private Fostering, DoH, 1994

⁴ S Israel and T McVeigh, "What happened to Victoria will happen to someone else", The Observer, 23 September 2001

Terry Philpot is consultant editor of Community Care, and is the author of A Very Private Practice: An Investigation into Private Fostering published this month by British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering at £9.95. Available from 020 7593 2000.

Regularly updated website on Laming inquiry at www.victoria-climbie-inquiry.org.uk