Council's plea for more foster care families in Calderdale

Calderdale Council believes placements are better for the children allowing them to live in their home area.

They are also more economic for the authority which otherwise has to buy expensive external placements.

The council’s ethos is that all children should live with a family – their own or a foster family – where it is possible, scrutiny board members heard.

This year the campaign includes extensive marketing across all media from print to radio, and social media including a Facebook question-and-answer session, modernising of the council’s website and online inquiry forms and some targeted campaigns.

These include reaching out to former foster carers and independent fostering agency carers.

Other promotional tools include inclusion in the Council Tax leaflet all Calderdale households will receive and a calendar of pop-up stalls in the borough throughout the year.

Director of Children and Young People’s Services, Julie Jenkins, said two things in social care were needed in the borough – Calderdale had got to encourage more people to foster children and more people to come into social work.

Cabinet member for Children and Young People’s Services, Coun Adam Wilkinson (Lab, Sowerby Bridge) said delivering social care packages and social services such as these – councils legally have to do this – was now taking around 70 per cent of Calderdale’s budget.

The council would need to look at cost-effective measures – one such was looking at the possibility of Council Tax exemption for potential foster carers, though this would have to be as part of a whole review of Council Tax, said Coun Wilkinson.

Nationally, there was a decline of the number of families wishing to enter fostering, Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Board members heard.

The Covid-19 had a massive impact on numbers, leaving people feeling exhausted in terms of what they think they can manage to do.

Foster carers were not unhappy but another factor in falling numbers was the loss of some foster families due to natural ageing, members heard.