Fife foster carer fees to rise to tackle recruitment ‘crisis’

The amount paid by the local authority is to go up by 3.5 per cent. Fees will also rise for supported lodging carers.

Members of the council’s cabinet committee also approved recommendations for a change in the fee level structure, as well as the introduction of a referral fee for foster carers and supported lodgings carers who “refer a friend” who goes on to be formally approved.

Debbie Adamson, service manager for family based care, said the changes aimed to ensure they have foster carers for every child who needs one.

“There is a recruitment crisis across foster care not only in Scotland but across the whole of the UK,” she said. “We consulted with foster carers around what they need and what we can do better to retain them and show that we value them as carers.

“The change in level system will make a streamline transparent pathway and hopefully will make it more attractive to foster in Fife and hopefully have a positive impact in recruitment and retention.

“Increased recruitment of Fife foster carers will continue to lower our independence on the use of costly external fostering provisions which we have managed to decrease significantly over the past three years.

“We currently have 177 children in Fife in local authority foster care, 57 in purchased care and 219 children who are looked after in kinship care in Fife.”

Fife Council has 185 foster carers who provide a range of interim, emergency and long term placements for youngsters however Ms Adamson said they continue to lose carers as they get older and retire.

“We have had this year 47 enquiries - an increase of about 10 per cent on last year,” she added. “We are continuing to explore every avenue. We are trying to do as much as we can about recruitment to make sure we are reaching out to everybody out there. We are going to be doing a leaflet drop using the Scouts this year. We are trying to look at all avenues of advertising but we are up on enquiries from last year.”

Councillor Patrick Browne, who represents Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay, welcomed the changes.

“We should thank the carers who are providing this very valuable service,” he said. “Carers obviously provide a critical job and thanks to them for the work that they do.”