Foster carer push after Ofsted criticism of Swindon

Foster parents Donna, Mandy and Karen have been sharing their experiences

Swindon is starting a new push to find local people who can help look after the town's most vulnerable children.

Some 41% of the three hundred children in its care are currently placed out of the area as there are too few foster carers to meet demand.

The new campaign is one of the ways Swindon is addressing recent Ofsted criticism.

But the council leader said the national system of private fostering agencies was "broken".

September's Ofsted report rated the Children's Services department inadequate with problems across several key areas.

On the topic of fostering, inspectors found "there has been a lack of an overarching strategy across the council to secure sufficient number and range of foster homes".

The council says the new foster recruitment campaign is aiming to help "improve the life chances" of children in its care.

Councils have a legal responsibility to look after vulnerable children when it is not safe for them to remain at home.

For some this may only be a few days, for others it is years.

But due to a shortage of foster carers locally, of the three hundred children in Swindon Borough Council's care, 120 of them are living elsewhere in the country.

Swindon foster parents Donna, Mandy and Karen have been sharing their experiences with BBC Radio Wiltshire.

"It's awful for a child to find themselves in foster care in the first place, but then to be moved to a different town or city miles away just adds to the trauma I think", said Karen, 59, who has been fostering for three years.

Swindon council leader Jim Robbins said the "whole system, I feel, is broken"

"It teaches you tolerance, to look beyond behaviours," she said.

"It's like another addition to your family, we love it," said foster parent of three decades, Donna, 62, who had invited children she had fostered to her wedding.

"When they come to us they can be very wary of adults, very introvert," said Mandy, 54, who fosters children under the age of five. "Then seeing them grow is just a brilliant feeling".

The council has just increased the weekly allowance paid to foster carers up to £708 in an attempt to recruit and retain more.

Having to find placements out of town, including as far as Scotland, can be hugely disruptive for children and vastly costly for taxpayers.

"It doesn't work for the child, its much more expensive for us as a council," said council leader Jim Robbins.

"Some of those out-of-Swindon placements are costing us up to ten thousand pounds a week, they're eye watering sums of money," he said.

"The whole system I feel is broken," Mr Robbins said when asked how it can cost so much to use agency rather than council foster services.

"There are venture capitalist firms taking over children firms, they're charging huge amounts of money because they know we have that statutory duty [to find a placement]".

It is a subject close to the Labour leader's heart, as he and his wife spent several years as foster carers.

"We went into it thinking this was something we'd do one weekend a month, then over time realised we could offer more" he said. "That's what I'd urge people to do, go and find out."

Residents interested in applying can find out more on the Swindon Borough Council website.

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