PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Foster Care: Refugees (19 April 2022)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will ask local authorities to show flexibility with regard to the clearance of uncleared adults within homes with in-place fostered children, to enable foster families to accommodate Ukrainian families including adults.

Asked by:
Navendu Mishra (Labour)

The decision to become a host family should involve everyone living in the household including children, whose views, wishes and feeling should be taken into account. There will be additional considerations when the household includes children in foster care.

Foster carers are required to give written notice to their fostering provider when there is a change in the composition of the household. We would expect foster carers to contact their fostering service provider and the local authority/authorities for any children already living in their care when considering applying to the Homes for Ukraine Scheme (where the local authority is not their fostering service provider).

If a foster carer has capacity to take additional children, we encourage fostering agencies to explore with them what support the foster carer can provide, including to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children already in the country and those who continue to arrive.

Local authorities are responsible for safeguarding all children that they look after according to existing guidance and the statutory framework. The department expects them to work together with fostering agencies where there is a change to the fostering household composition to ensure that children that they look after are safeguarded.

Answered by:
Will Quince (Conservative)
25 April 2022