Councils are threatening foster carers that
they will remove children from their care unless they apply for a
special guardianship order, a parliamentary committee was told
yesterday.
Kevin Williams, chief executive of
TACT, the largest
charitable fostering agency in England and Wales, told the
children, schools and families select committee that carers
had said that they had been urged to move into special
guardianship.
Under
special guardianship,
the child is no longer the responsbility of the local authority,
and carers are able to make decisions about day-to-day living. They
were introduced under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and give
special guardians legal parental responsibility but, unlike
adoption orders, do not completely remove parental responsibility
from birth parents.
Councils must be judged on long-term
placements
Fostering
Network chief executive Robert Tapsfield, who also gave
evidence as part of the committee's inquiry into looked-after
children's services, said the Department for Children, Schools and
Families should require councils to count the number of their
children in long-term foster placements.
Currently local authorities are only judged
on the numbers of adoptions and special guardianship orders, which
was "not helpful", he said.
Later, Williams said children in care were
often criminalised by the system as a result of committing minor
crimes when they vented their frustrations by breaking a window in
their residential placement or running away from foster care and
being reported missing to the police.
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Essential information on adoption and
fostering