This report is seeking approval for an increase in allowances and fees for foster carers approved by Herefordshire Council.

The cabinet member children and families introduced the report. She explained that it was hoped an increase to allowances would increase the choice of placements available and reduce the chance of placements breaking down. Having a wider choice of local placements would improve outcomes for children and young people in foster care and reduce reliance on more expensive private arrangements and out of county placements.

The head of service for care experienced children and young people highlighted the key points of the report. She explained that a review had shown Herefordshire had fallen behind the allowances paid by other councils. The recommendations in the report would address this and ensure that Herefordshire did not fall behind again. The recommendation to provide a discount on council tax was a way to provide a benefit to council foster carers that private foster care agencies could not offer. It was hoped this would attract potential foster carers to work with the council rather than join a private agency.

Cabinet members were fully supportive of the proposals and noted that:

•                  Efforts to recruit more foster carers were ongoing but numbers remained similar to the previous year for general carers although there had been an increase in the number of kinship carers;

•                  There had been an increase in the number of children and young people placed in residential care because the council could not find a placement for them, at the time of the meeting there were 23 children in residential care whose needs would be best met in a foster family;

•                  Additional support had been added to the HIPPS scheme in terms of finance and wrap around care, covid had made the situation more difficult but pressures did exist before the pandemic;

•                  It was a priority that children received stability, support and guidance when it was deemed necessary for them to be in foster care;

•                  It was hoped that the additional allowance and discount on council tax would allow potential carers to adjust their work commitments;

•                  Every foster carer had an allocated social worker in addition to the social worker allocated to their child in care, there were offers for regular respite, support groups for peer support and a well-developed training programme;

•                  The holistic package of support was important - conversations took place regularly with foster carers to understand what additional support they needed and the reasons for carers leaving, all carers had an annual review where they could feed back on their experiences and foster carer representatives were included on the corporate parenting panel;

•                  Independent foster care agencies were approved and regulated by Ofsted in the same way as the council, a regional framework of independent agencies was in place but the council would always look to use in-house placements first;

•                  Where a child was placed with an independent foster carer they remained the responsibility of the council;

•                  It would be hard for the council to compete with independent agencies on a financial  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49