Urgent call goes out for more foster carers
NORTHERN Ireland’s under-pressure care system desperately needs more foster families, a senior social worker has warned.
There are more than 3,000 children in care, with around 16 young people admitted each week in 2017-18.
Finding a larger range of carers who can look after children with different needs is a priority, said Colm McCafferty, assistant director of corporate parenting with the Southern Trust.
“There has never been a higher number of looked-after children in Northern Ireland,” Mr McCafferty explained.
“There’s unprecedented pressures on the foster care system to meet the needs of children coming in.”
Today marks the fourth annual Care Day.
It celebrates children who have had experience of the care system and their carers.
As of March 2018 there were 3,109 children in care — a figure that has increased by almost a quarter since 2011, according to the Department of Health.
The Southern Trust had the largest proportion of admissions across all of Northern Ireland’s five trusts in 2017-18.
Mr McCafferty, who has been a social worker for 25 years, said that while the trust was successful in placing around one in
three children with their extended families, the rest needed alternative arrangements.
He said foster carers who can take in siblings or look after young people with disabilities, and carers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, were particularly welcome.
“Every child is unique, and every foster carer is unique,” Mr McCafferty stressed.
“Every foster carer has his or her own priorities, whether it’s to their own family or, in many circumstances, to the foster children they’re committed to.
“We desperately want to have a broader pool of carers to enable us to get that match right from the outset.”
The greater number of children in need is a “reflection of significantly increased complexities in society”, including the effects of austerity on vulnerable families, he added.
“I think vulnerable families are less equipped to deal with pressures,” Mr McCafferty said.
“Going back maybe a generation, I think there were more sophisticated extended family support networks.
“(But today) a lot of the children that come in to the care system don’t have that extended family network.”
While fostering is a challenging experience, it is also a very rewarding one, said Mr McCafferty, whose own parents became foster carers.
He added: “Fostering can be a really, really rewarding and positive experience.
“The vast majority of those children (in care in the Southern Trust) are in very settled, longterm foster placements and become very, very ingrained into that family.
“It’s a two-way relationship. I certainly know foster carers who see the benefits and see a child making progress. It’s exceptionally rewarding.”
Care Day takes place across the UK today and celebrates the rights and experiences of young people who are or who have been in care.
A gala show, organised by local charity Voice of Young People in Care, is due to be held at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast this evening.