City adopts a new campaign to recruit more foster carers

Published on Monday 12 May 2008 14:07

A CAMPAIGN to encourage more people to become foster carers has been launched in the Capital, after it emerged the city had 40 children waiting for a placement.

Edinburgh City Council's Caring for our Children Campaign is aimed at attracting foster carers, day carers and adopters.

The high-profile campaign will include posters appearing on buses and taxis throughout the Capital, as well as flyers and newspaper adverts.

It is hoped the campaign will encourage people who have considered fostering to come forward and help provide badly-needed homes for some of the city's most vulnerable children.

Among the most urgently-needed foster carers are those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, to allow the council the choice to put children in a family which shares the same culture and lifestyle as them.

It is understood that the number of black and ethnic minority children needing foster homes within Edinburgh is rising.

They are also looking for families willing to take on disabled children and teenagers.

The launch was timed to coincide with the start of Foster Care Fortnight, an annual campaign co-ordinated by national charity the Fostering Network to raise awareness of fostering and to recruit more foster carers.

Kirstie MacLean, the council's service manager for family-based care, said the drive was aimed at giving them greater flexibility when placing children in care.

"We do need to get more foster carers, both for long-term placements and for emergency care, but also we want to have as much choice as possible," she said. "We are trying more and more to keep siblings together in foster care, and that can be hard.

"I was at the retirement of a woman who had been a carer for more than 25 years, and she said she had always got more back than she gave out.

"It can be a difficult, frustrating job, but ultimately most find it to be very rewarding."

Tracy Thomson, 17, has been in foster care since she was ten, after her mother suffered a series of strokes and became unable to look after her.

Over that time she has stayed with several foster families, and felt that their help had been invaluable to her.

"The families I have stayed with have all been really nice, and they have helped me get through school and cope with what happened to my mum," she said.

"Sometimes it has been difficult going from family to family, as you always have to start again, so it would have been better to be with one family.

"But it has been so important to me. I could be in care until I'm 21, and I have needed these families to be there for me."

Anyone over 21 can be a foster carer – they do not need to be married, or a homeowner, or even employed.

Councillor Marilyne MacLaren, convener of education, children and families, said: "I am very pleased that we plan to raise the payment for foster carers over the next few years. It is important that people do not feel they can't afford to be foster carer."