Fostering (Support)
The final item of business today is a members' business debate on motion S3M-80, in the name of Christine Grahame, entitled "Can't Afford to Foster". The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises the valuable contribution made by Scotland's foster carers; notes with concern that there is a shortage of 1,700 fostering households in Scotland, including in the Scottish Borders; further notes that, at a time when more children, many of whom display challenging behaviour, are living with foster carers than at any other time, 37% of foster carers receive no payment at all while two-thirds of those who are paid receive less than the minimum wage, and accordingly considers that the fostering network should be supported as a matter of priority.
I thank all those members who have stayed behind for this important and timely debate and, in anticipation, I thank those who will contribute. I look forward to there being a Government debate on the subject, possibly once the national fostering and kinship care strategy has been published. I understand that that strategy will be published before the end of the year and I trust that the issue will unite the Parliament. We already know of the consensus between Wendy Alexander and the First Minister on kinship care—it is not often that we can call that pair consensual.
I applaud all who have fostered or are currently fostering children, whether officially or unofficially, as in the case of kinship carers. Foster carers are a special breed of people and I can safely assert that they do not do it for the money. Some receive no money at all, while others receive a wholly insufficient payment at the vagaries of their local authority. There is a debate to be had about private provision—there are some 22 agencies—versus public provision, but that is not the focus of my debate.
What a tough and demanding job fostering is. All of us who are parents can testify to the trial of parenting—from the troublesome two-year-old to the testosterone teens. I ask members to imagine what it would be like if the children in their charge were not their own children, and might also be damaged and therefore very demanding of their time, patience and emotions.
Let us be clear: fostering has changed dramatically over the decades, both in the task itself and in the reasons for a child being placed in the care of another adult. Although it is still centrally important that a foster carer makes a child or young person part of their home, the changing reasons for children becoming looked after—which, sadly, are nowadays quite often a consequence of parental alcoholism or drug addiction and of an accompanying chaotic lifestyle that can include multiple partners—mean that the duties and skills required of the foster carer are of a professional nature. The foster carer becomes the anchor for the troubled child, but the carer must be supported by a team, including respite carers to give them a bit of a break, social workers, medical staff and so on.
Yesterday, those points were brought home to me in a discussion with Tanya Bradshaw, a foster carer from the Borders. She had newly completed a foster placement in which the child had first been introduced to drugs and alcohol by his mother when he was only eight. He was placed with Tanya when he was 12. Fostering him was not an easy task.
I have been told of children aged two who were already severely damaged emotionally and behaviourally before they were placed in care. Whether society should step in sooner is a debate for another day, but we should have it.
Becoming a foster carer is no easy matter. I understand that the process—from an initial inquiry through Disclosure Scotland, through to medicals, interviews, assessment and report, and then through to training—can take from six to eight months. That is as it should be for the duty of care that we must discharge for this most vulnerable group of children. Many applicants—some 90 to 97 per cent—fall by the wayside. To me, that demonstrates the quality and resolve of those who stay the course, but what does society pay our foster carers? Of those who are paid—which is not all of them—three quarters receive less than £100 a week and some two thirds receive less than the minimum wage.
What about in-between placements? Some receive nothing at all. If no other work can be found, they have to return to benefits, which poses additional difficulties for the foster parent claimant. As Tanya Bradshaw told me, it is not a job for a part-timer. Only being paid allowed her to give up her employment for that career—for career it is. It is a vocation.
We pay lip service to placing the welfare of the child at the heart of our social policies. We applaud the dedication, commitment and skills of our foster carers, but we do not put money where our mouth is. We do not ensure that there is a national minimum payment for those carers, or a statutory duty that provides a framework and enforcement. No wonder that at least 1,700 additional foster families are required. With the norm being placements of more than one, members can do the arithmetic on the unmet need and the number of children—vulnerable and at risk—who are kept in unsuitable domestic situations because there is absolutely nowhere for them to go. On those grounds alone, we are failing those children more than their parents are. We should know better, and we can do better.
I have known the minister for a very long time—it has probably blighted his career prospects. I know that he is a caring individual; he is the right man for the job. He is not as dour as he is depicted. I have seen him smile—I made it my diary entry a few years ago. Now he is smiling again. I want him and the cabinet secretary to lean hard on the finance secretary to recognise, when it comes to divvying out the funds in the comprehensive spending review, the professionalism and dedication of carers—whether fostering or kinship—and to ensure proper and secure remuneration, with allowances between placements. In doing that, we will not only secure those much-needed foster carers; we will secure the prospect of a happy future for our most vulnerable and damaged children. Then we can truly call them looked after.
I congratulate Christine Grahame on securing the debate. She is following a tradition, created since the re-establishment of the Parliament in 1999, in which MSPs across the political spectrum seek to recognise the tremendous work done by foster carers and to highlight the particular challenges that foster carers face and the effect that that has on the children they care for.
Children need foster care because, for whatever reason, their own parents cannot care for them. In Scotland, we can be very proud of the operation of the children's hearings system, but no one can be unaware of the hearings' concerns that more and more of the children they see are welfare cases. It had previously been perceived that the hearings would deal with behavioural issues. In a significant and increasing number of cases, children are required to be placed in foster homes as a result of parental use of illegal drugs or alcohol, so we continue to see an increase in the demand for foster carers.
Most local authorities would say that they welcome the three-year package of additional resources provided by the previous Scottish Executive to promote fostering and aid recruitment. My local authority, West Lothian Council, used some of the money to conduct a high-profile advertisement campaign that has had very positive results, but we cannot be complacent. I am sure that West Lothian is not the only local authority in which a significant number of foster carers are in the 50-plus age bracket. As they move out of caring, they will need to be replaced.
Does the member know whether West Lothian is an exception in its ability to recruit foster carers? I had a conversation—coincidentally—with a foster carer a couple of days ago. Her experience is that a smaller number of people are coming forward because of the very difficulties to which the member refers.
It is clearly the case that the number coming forward has fallen, although West Lothian, in which prospective foster carers have been targeted, has had good results.
The Foster Care Associates Scotland briefing that MSPs received gave an example of foster carers' views on fees and allowances. Becoming a foster parent has never been about the money, but it is important to support the children who are involved.
Members will also be aware of the difference in allowances available to foster carers who have no relationship with the child and those who are referred to as kinship carers. Kinship care is often the best alternative for a child who cannot stay with their parents, but kinship carers are the most financially disadvantaged. At First Minister's question time, Wendy Alexander asked the First Minister to begin to correct that inequality by ensuring that £10 million is made available to ensure that all kinship carers of looked-after children in Scotland are paid the recommended allowance for foster carers. Christine Grahame may be reassured, but I was still a little uncertain about what the First Minister's reply was, so I ask the minister to make it clear in his closing remarks what action has been taken to date on that proposal and when kinship carers in Scotland can expect such an allowance to be paid.
Time does not allow me to explore a number of issues, such as different allowances for foster carers in different authorities or the differences in the non-financial support that is provided, which I am sure other members will mention. I hope that we will have an opportunity to debate the issue in the Scottish Government's time. Foster carers deserve our support, not least because, at the end of the day, the people who will benefit most are the vulnerable children for whom they care.
I am sure that we are all—I certainly am—grateful to the redoubtable Christine Grahame for lodging the motion and allowing the Parliament to focus on the pressures on foster caring. Those pressures are admirably summed up in the motion, which I am happy to support.
We are all aware of fostering. It is important to say that the skills required—generosity of spirit and heart—are found in individuals who are moved to foster not because they are motivated by financial gain in any way but because they have a calling, for want of a better description.
My direct experience of fostering is virtually non-existent, but some years ago the sister of a close friend, who had a large family of her own, took to fostering with her husband. Hers was a chaotic household with several children of her own competing for their own space and agendas, accompanied by a bewildering array of family pets. The pets were evidence of her huge heart, as more than one had an extraordinary—reckless, even, as I thought at the time—budget spent on veterinary bills to keep it going when others, me included, might have opted for a quieter alternative. It was evidence of her nature that she would do her best for the animal whatever.
I dropped round over the months; some foster children would have come and gone, others would have stayed longer. I particularly remember one child—who on my earlier visits had spent the day curled up under a table in the corner—emerging and becoming an engaged and happy member of the family. The satisfaction of that was the couple's real reward. It struck me that theirs was not a household of intellectuals or high achievers but a happy home where the adults had a huge capacity to give and to be interested in the well-being of children other than their own. That is the sort of commitment that deserves financial reward and that should be rewarded more regularly by our national honours system.
Christine Grahame's motion highlights the increasing need for such people to come forward and for them to be certain that their capacity to offer an essential fostering environment will be properly compensated. In particular, there is a need for people from minority communities, in which there is an acute shortage of foster carers, to come forward. Sadly, there is a greater requirement for foster carers now than ever before and, if it is a consequence of the same factors that arise in other areas of public policy, it is set to continue to grow.
Regrettably, we now need to intervene as early as birth if it is apparent that there is a history of addiction to alcohol or drugs that may well have started with the grandparents, plagued the mother—likely a single mother at that—and left the child with potential health deficiencies that need third-party intervention and care if they are to be addressed at all. Then there are children who are abused or children to whom fate deals a sudden and unexpectedly cruel hand. They all share one thing: they are vulnerable and in need of our engagement—as are children all the way through to young adulthood.
Such children need to be cared for. It is not a question of foster care or nothing. The state and our councils have a responsibility to intervene, and a cost will attach itself to the care of such a child if they are placed in a formal facility. There are alternatives: care in a home or foster care. Evidence shows that most children want to be part of a family, to have the chaotic buzz, excitement and normality that the family of my friend's sister provided. From what we can establish, the outcomes for children in foster care are, generally, better, for obvious reasons.
The argument should not be whether foster carers are paid and whether that represents some huge additional commitment—the care of every child will have a cost in any event. What the motion seeks to establish is that, if foster caring is desirable—we all believe that it is—the cost of caring for a child should be willingly paid to the foster carer at an appropriate rate, not on a discretionary basis, as sometimes happens.
It might not always be possible to find a suitable foster home, and that might be even more difficult if the shortage that is now evident becomes ever more acute. If, however, we can encourage an increased fostering community and ensure that it is paid for the costs that are associated with caring for any child, we should do so—particularly after the commitment that is shown by foster carers—partly in recognition of the exhaustive approval process that they have gone through to achieve that status.
Not everyone has a natural capacity to foster. We should recognise that and be grateful to those who do. Christine Grahame is right: the problem is not in retreat. The shortage is current and urgent. This is a matter of priority and we should all recognise it as such.
I congratulate Christine Grahame on securing this debate.
I will confine my remarks to an aspect that Mary Mulligan raised: kinship care, which involves children being looked after by relatives other than their parents—usually their grandparents.
The issue was brought to my attention by a constituent. I will read briefly from the letter she sent me.
"I am a grandparent bringing up my two grandsons after the loss of my daughter in a car accident 4 years ago. It has been a terrible struggle as you can imagine. Recently I've joined a grandparents association who are trying to fight to get an allowance called kinship allowance which is the same as foster carers get. This allowance is approximately £300 - £400 per week per child. At the moment all I receive is £114 a month per child. As you can see the difference is enormous."
As a result, I asked the Minister for Children and Early Years some parliamentary questions about the plans that he might have to increase the level of kinship payments to bring them into line with those provided for foster carers.
On 27 August, the minister replied, saying that he was considering a range of measures to improve the support that is available to kinship carers and children in care. He said that those measures are to be published in the national strategy, which is to be published soon. Perhaps the minister can give us a date for that publication tonight.
An estimated 1,712 children are being looked after by relatives, but those are only the ones we know about; there could be at least 10,000 such children who are unknown to the authorities.
The payment legislation is confusing: the subject is covered by three different sets of legislation. The bottom line, however, is invariably that kinship carers get less than approved foster carers. As my constituent pointed out, the difference in payments is substantial. For example, East Dunbartonshire Council, which covers my constituency, pays kinship care at two rates: one for residential cover and one for non-residential cover. For a child aged up to four years, the weekly payment is £62.18 for residential cover and £22.50 for non-residential cover. For somebody aged 11 to 16 years, the rate is £97.02 for residential cover and £34.83 for non-residential cover. Compare that with the rates for foster care. The current recommended rate for children between the ages of nought and four being fostered is £118.60 a week. For those aged 11 to 15 years, it is £168.18. That level of payment would make all the difference to my constituent and her two grandchildren.
As Mary Mulligan said, just before the recess the First Minister was challenged by Wendy Alexander to commit an additional £10 million to a new scheme to support grandparents and other relatives of looked-after children. Labour's proposals are for a new carers allowance for kinship carers, which could be introduced through the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007. At present, about one third of Scotland's local authorities pay equal sums to foster carers and kinship carers, but that means that two thirds do not.
As others have said, this issue is not about money; it is about doing the right thing. Children who are being looked after by their relatives deserve the same consideration as other children in foster care. There is a shortage of foster carers, as Christine Grahame said. That means that, very often, the burden of responsibility falls on relatives—usually the grandparents. I urge the minister to include equal payments in his strategy. Indeed, I would go further and support Christine Grahame's suggestion about national minimum payments. I look forward to the minister getting the extra £10 million that he needs for equality and dispersing that cash as soon as possible.
Christine Grahame has lodged a timeous motion, and I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in support of Scotland's foster carers and to say a few words from the perspective of an individual and that of a former deputy minister who had some responsibilities in the area.
Many of us in Parliament think that in our society there are few tragedies greater than children and young people being born into difficult circumstances, who are affected by various family traumas caused by neglect or abuse, and who lose the right to a childhood and to the opportunities in life that are supported by the stable family that most of us take for granted.
Those disadvantages run through life and down the generations, as has been mentioned. Even in the case of one young person's life, I have always thought it hugely significant that something like three quarters of those who appear before the children's panel at 16, 17 or 18 on criminal matters will have appeared before the panel at the age of 6 for being in need of parental care and protection. That fact and the associated information that we have about development, literacy challenges and mental health demonstrate the necessity of supporting families in need, of teaching family and parental skills, of early intervention and—in the context of this debate—of recruiting more foster parents, and supporting and training them for what are often, as the motion notes, complex challenges involving young people who have complex problems.
It is an enormous tribute to the quality of our foster carers that so many of the young people in their care are able to recover and thrive, to succeed educationally and to prosper in life. Children in foster care have better outcomes by far than those in institutional care and those who live at home with at-risk parents. It is important, however, to recognise that that is a generalisation, and that no one solution suits every child or young person.
As a result of the changing ideas that were encapsulated in the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007, it is now clearer that a continuum of provision is required: from the institutional care that is needed for some young people, through long-term care—supported under the new act by permanence orders—through adoption on a somewhat revised model, through short-term fostering or respite care to befriending or supporting families in their own homes. Foster carers have, in a general sense, a lot to offer at those various levels.
There is now more recognition of the importance of children's identity—their links to parents and birth-family members—to their psychological health and well-being and their resilience in meeting life's challenges. As David Whitton and others have touched on, many children are looked after by grandparents or other kinship carers in a variety of practical and legal situations. Those are quite complex situations and challenges across a number of different ball games. Prior to the election, the Scottish Executive consulted on those various issues and we expect that the strategy—which the current Scottish Government has been considering—will emerge from that very soon. The issues include things such as support when there are complaints, overnight stays, whether there should be a cap on numbers in one household, and, in particular, support that is not just financial but which includes money.
I hope that the minister will be able to make announcements on those issues, shortly if not today, that will build on the interim financial investment that Mary Mulligan rightly spoke about, which the previous Executive provided to councils to increase support to fosterers and to kinship carers. I know that it is being used to good effect and—importantly—to varying effect throughout the country by different local authorities. I stress that it is not just about financial support, but other forms of support as well.
If there is a public policy priority that stands above all other priorities, it must be improvement of the life chances of disadvantaged young people. I wish the minister well in his arguments and discussions with the finance minister about those matters. Fostering is a policy that manifestly works—not in every instance, but certainly for many children. We need to bend every sinew to recruit more people to undertake that vital work and we need to support them, train them, ensure that they are valued and encouraged, and ensure that their standing is recognised by schools and health services in everyday life.
Greater success in fostering is good for the economy, for social services and for the education system. Above all, it is good for young people. We must do everything that we can in that context.
Deputy Presiding Officer, I advised your office that I would be unable to stay for the entire debate, so I apologise in advance to members for my having to leave immediately after I speak. I congratulate Christine Grahame on securing tonight's members' business debate. She made a number of important points, not least about money. The minister will probably not be hugely surprised to hear that I will add my tuppenceworth to what she said.
Like David Whitton and one or two others, I will concentrate on kinship care because I have constituency casework on the matter—I have worked with more than one individual. In particular, I have a long-running case involving a grandparent with whom I have been dealing since before Parliament started: indeed, I was dealing with the case during my previous existence as a member of the Westminster Parliament. On the face of it—this was certainly my view before I was involved in the matter—we might think that kinship care would be regarded as the best of all possible worlds and that everything that could be done to encourage it should and would be done. Sadly, my experience is that that is not the case.
Councils have a discretionary power to support kinship carers, but it is applied inconsistently throughout Scotland. That is astonishing. Payments for kinship care can be considerably lower than payments for foster care. David Whitton talked about his local council. In my area, foster care payments range from £118.60 to £204.55 per week, depending on various factors, whereas kinship care payments range from £37.42 to £74.88. That scenario is not unusual in Scotland.
Unsurprisingly, as I understand it, kinship care rates are falling compared with foster care rates, although we already think that foster care rates are too low. Councils need not link kinship care payments to foster care allowances: often, they do not. Not only are kinship carers paid considerably less, the payments that they receive are not linked to payments for foster care.
I hope that the Minister for Children and Early Years will address the issue in the forthcoming national fostering and kinship care strategy. I understand that kinship care and funding are among the issues that were raised most frequently in submissions to the consultation on the strategy. That is probably evidence of how serious the issue is. Frankly, I am at a loss to understand why payments to kinship carers should be different from payments to foster carers.
My approach might be simplistic, but I would have thought that family, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, is the best of all possible worlds for children. If a family placement can be found, that is best, because it will keep the child within the context of the background and identity that Robert Brown mentioned. However, the difference in payments reflects something else: it seems to show that we do not value family ties and that they are less important. That is the only conclusion that we can draw from the current situation and in my view that is extremely unfortunate. I do not know why on earth the situation started in the first place. We need to examine the system and change it.
I, too, congratulate Christine Grahame on bringing this important subject to the chamber for debate. As other members have done, I will address the issue of kinship carers rather than foster carers, although I in no way discount the valuable work that foster carers do for children of whom they have no knowledge.
It has been highlighted during the debate that the use of kinship carers is possibly the best way to look after children whose families are unable to look after them. Kinship carers have personal knowledge of young people and provide them with access to their normal support networks. Children thrive better within their wider family.
Rather than repeat points that other members have made, I will raise a couple of points on other matters, the first of which is Children 1st's family group conferencing. Kinship carers are sometimes hard to identify—there is not always a person in the family who is obvious to social workers or the wider group and who can put their own life to one side and make room for a young person to come into their home. Children 1st has piloted family group conferencing, which allows young people to identify the people who are important in their lives. That includes teachers, professionals, family members and, more widely, family friends. The young people are allowed to invite those people to a family group conference, at which the group is charged with considering ways of supporting the young person in the situation in which they find themselves. That is a really good way of identifying people who might not be obvious as kinship carers. Unfortunately, it is just a project and is not available throughout Scotland. I ask that consideration be given to funding and mainstreaming that valuable project. It would allow social workers and other professionals to exhaust the availability of kinship carers before looking at foster carers.
Another anomaly that I want to raise is the status of legal guardians. Kinship carers who go through the courts to get legal guardianship of children—giving children security and the knowledge that they are in a long-term placement that is legally secure—are not eligible for kinship or foster care allowance. That can cause real problems to families that find themselves in hardship and cannot access even the meagre kinship care allowance.
It is also important to point out that local authorities have the discretion to pay kinship carers the foster carer allowance. Rather than just allow them that discretion, we need to consider whether it should be a duty. If kinship carers did not look after those children and young people, it would fall on social workers to have them placed with foster carers, who are often not available and who are—when they are available—hugely more expensive than kinship carers and do not provide family links.
It is important that we do not see kinship care as an exercise in which to cut corners and save money. The onus is on authorities to pay for the service, and the money needs to support the children who suffer in really bad circumstances and who end up needing to be cared for outwith their immediate families.
I thank Christine Grahame for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue.
The scale of the problem is frightening and it is growing due to parental drug misuse. There has been a 13 per cent increase in the number of children on the child protection register, and there has been a worrying rise in the number of unborn children, babies and toddlers whose lives are endangered by parental drug addiction. The biggest rise was among unborn babies—a 72 per cent increase—and the scale of the problem continues to increase. I believe that 80 per cent of children whose parents abuse drugs are no longer living with those parents.
In considering capacity to deal with the problem, we have to recognise the roles of foster carers. They play a great role in providing a safe haven and support for parents in crisis. It cannot help that the support that those foster carers get differs from one local authority to the next. How can we build capacity when we send negative messages like that? Foster carers are part of a solution to deal with an ever-growing and serious problem.
Foster carers are, however, only part of the solution to the growing problem: members have mentioned today the role of grandparents, the extended family and the adoption services when we need to rescue children from the direst of circumstances and give them a place of safety where they can be nurtured for their future.
Like most members, I have a grandparents group in my area—it is right that we mention them in debates such as this. As the minister will know—he has taken an interest in the matter—the issues that those groups have are not solely about money, although there is a grievance about that: they are at the wrong time of their life and they find difficulty in seeing young children through their education.
There is also a difficulty in respect of the relationships with social workers, who sometimes see grandparents as interfering when they try to intervene in the interests of the children. Grandparents are also aggrieved that social workers turn up when the children's parents have been jailed and ask them to take the children. If the grandparents rush in and prevent the situation from worsening, they are left with the children and given only basic support, which is not acceptable. Such stories have been told to me by the women to whom I have spoken. They are not anti-drugs and do not want to victimise drug addicts, but they are living with the reality of having a child who is a drug addict who has children.
When the grandparents try to get some certainty into the young person's life—as opposed to the to-ing and fro-ing, the yo-yo system of going back and forth between the parents and the grandparents—and move legally to adopt the child, they receive the final insult. It can cost them, on fixed incomes and with limited means, £2,000 to adopt their grandchild, to take them out of their misery and give some permanence to their life. Also, the addict can then suddenly become interested not in the child, but in the benefits that they recognise will move with the child to the grandparent when their legal status changes. Those issues are important to grandparents and to the fostering service, whom the minister recognises are part of a solution.
We must act to identify and protect such children and, when necessary, we must take them out of the homes that are doing them harm. We must have the capacity—through fostering, adoption and kinship care—to give those children the opportunities that we want for them.
I, too, extend my thanks to Christine Grahame for initiating the debate. There have been some fine speeches from around the chamber, and the debate has provided an opportunity for Parliament to underline its commitment to supporting foster carers, kinship carers and all those who look after and support vulnerable children.
When I was a member of the then Education Committee—when Robert Brown was still the convener or when he was the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People; I cannot remember which—I was proud to work with members of Parliament from across the political divide to introduce the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Bill, which is now an act. I look forward to working with Parliament to implement the important provisions in the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 that will strengthen the options for children who need a new family.
Like all members of the Education Committee, I was concerned that the importance of foster and kinship care should not be overlooked. We all agreed that the needs of children in foster care and of carers need closer consideration. As a result of our pressure, the then Executive announced the launch of a consultation on foster and kinship care at the end of last year.
I have considered carefully the findings of that consultation, together with other evidence, and I can confirm to Parliament that I will launch a foster and kinship care strategy by the end of the year. Unfortunately for Mr Whitton, I do not have a specific date for it, but it will probably be in early December. I will outline the principles of the forthcoming strategy.
Our Government is determined to deliver a child-centred universal approach for all children, but we will continue to pay particular attention to the needs of children who are at risk and who are living in vulnerable family situations—the kind of situations to which Duncan McNeil and others have referred. A key part of that will be support for families to enable them to stay together. When children need to be cared for away from their birth family, we are determined to support the delivery of consistent, secure, high-quality and nurturing care, whether that is provided by the wider family, by foster carers or in residential care. The measures that I will set out in the forthcoming strategy will be central to achieving that vision.
Do I take it that, when the minister talks about a universal approach, we will see equality of payment for foster carers and kinship carers?
I will come back to that.
We have already started to support high-quality foster care and to address the resource issues that were identified by Christine Grahame. In July, I announced an initial £4 million package for training, advice and information for foster and kinship carers. The funding provided agencies with a training grant of £1,000 for each full-time foster carer and each kinship carer of a looked-after child. Members might view the equality of treatment of foster carers and kinship carers as something of a signal of future intentions. The grant has proved to be a tremendous success—so much so that we have made available additional resources to extend the grant to foster carers who provide short-term breaks and respite care to children in need, and who play a crucial role in helping families to stay together. We have also extended the grant to include kinship carers of children who do not fall into the looked-after child category but who are known by their local authority to be vulnerable and in need. That means that my Government has now spent a total of £6.1 million on supporting training for foster and kinship carers.
I am also grateful to the Fostering Network Scotland for supporting the Government's investment in training. The network hosted a meeting earlier this month that allowed local authorities and independent providers to come together and share ideas for commissioning and delivering training throughout the coming year. I am confident that that investment will lay the foundation for improving the quality of care that is provided to children. It also reinforces this Government's commitment to supporting those carers.
In addition, I have made available £126,000 to the Fostering Network Scotland so that it can expand support services to foster carers who are the subject of allegations. Our consultation told us that this can be an extremely stressful situation for carers that can mean that they need independent specialist support. I have also asked FNS to expand and further develop its mediation and advice helplines. I am delighted that it will be able to extend its services across Scotland and provide the in-depth support that has proved to be invaluable to many carers.
I have noted Christine Grahame's estimate of the shortage of foster carers and have a number of points to make about that. Leaving aside the arguments about precise figures, I agree that some children are having to wait for placements that will provide stability and security. I also agree that some children have been wrongly placed in care because no one else was available to take them on at that point.
Will the minister consider looking at the Children 1st project on family group conferencing, which will help to identify people to look after children who are difficult to place or for whom there is no obvious family member willing to step in?
I have met Children 1st, and I agree with the principles of family group conferencing.
As Robert Brown said in his thoughtful contribution to the debate, the overall problem is that we need fewer children to be brought into the looked-after children system in the first place. That is why the Government is committed to developing an early years strategy that will ensure that every child gets the best start in life. However, we also need to strengthen the recruitment and support of carers to ensure that we continue to attract and retain the dedicated individuals who work on behalf of us all to transform the lives of Scotland's most vulnerable children. I will address these issues as part of the forthcoming national fostering and kinship care strategy.
Meeting closed at 17:49.