Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to introduce workers' rights and protections for foster carers who are classed as self-employed.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
In England, the purpose of foster care is to provide children with the chance of a family life when they cannot be cared for by their birth parents.
Foster care is a devolved matter and the agreement that foster carers in England have with fostering service providers, including local authorities, sets out how they carry out their role. This is, however, not a contract of employment or a contract to perform work, which would be a necessary requirement for someone to be classed as either an employee or a worker.
The Children’s Act 1989 (Vol. 4: Fostering Services) and subsequent statutory guidance sets out strong safeguards to protect foster parents from unfair treatment, including the requirement for fostering services to have a complaints procedure, whistle blowing policy, and for foster parents to have the right to review by the Independent Review Mechanism. Fostering Better Outcomes (2018) sets out the government’s ambitions and commitments to improve the wider support available for foster parents in England. There are no plans to reclassify the employment status of foster carers to limb (b) workers.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will reclassify the employment status of foster carers to limb (b) workers.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
In England, the purpose of foster care is to provide children with the chance of a family life when they cannot be cared for by their birth parents.
Foster care is a devolved matter and the agreement that foster carers in England have with fostering service providers, including local authorities, sets out how they carry out their role. This is, however, not a contract of employment or a contract to perform work, which would be a necessary requirement for someone to be classed as either an employee or a worker.
The Children’s Act 1989 (Vol. 4: Fostering Services) and subsequent statutory guidance sets out strong safeguards to protect foster parents from unfair treatment, including the requirement for fostering services to have a complaints procedure, whistle blowing policy, and for foster parents to have the right to review by the Independent Review Mechanism. Fostering Better Outcomes (2018) sets out the government’s ambitions and commitments to improve the wider support available for foster parents in England. There are no plans to reclassify the employment status of foster carers to limb (b) workers.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason foster carers are classed as self-employed rather than employed.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
In England, the purpose of foster care is to provide children with the chance of a family life when they cannot be cared for by their birth parents.
Foster care is a devolved matter and the agreement that foster carers in England have with fostering service providers, including local authorities, sets out how they carry out their role. This is, however, not a contract of employment or a contract to perform work, which would be a necessary requirement for someone to be classed as either an employee or a worker.
The Children’s Act 1989 (Vol. 4: Fostering Services) and subsequent statutory guidance sets out strong safeguards to protect foster parents from unfair treatment, including the requirement for fostering services to have a complaints procedure, whistle blowing policy, and for foster parents to have the right to review by the Independent Review Mechanism. Fostering Better Outcomes (2018) sets out the government’s ambitions and commitments to improve the wider support available for foster parents in England. There are no plans to reclassify the employment status of foster carers to limb (b) workers.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of foster carers and support workers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have received the training on caring for those children that was commissioned to be delivered by ECPAT(UK) and the Refugee Council since 2016 in each local authority area.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Between November 2016 and February 2019, ECPAT(UK) and the Refugee Council have trained 2,086 foster carers and support workers on caring for the specialist safeguarding needs of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The training is equipping these carers with the skills they need to identify when a child is at risk of going missing to be onwards trafficked, of being exploited for economic, sexual, and criminal exploitation or of being exposed to radicalisation.
The information requested on the number of foster carers or support workers is not held centrally so we are unable to provide this as a proportion of the total foster carers and support workers.
Since 2016, recipients of the training have generally reported high levels of satisfaction with its quality. For the current tranche of training, 99% of those trained who provided feedback rated the training ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the training given to foster carers and support workers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children by ECPAT(UK) and the Refugee Council on preventing unaccompanied children from going missing.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Between November 2016 and February 2019, ECPAT(UK) and the Refugee Council have trained 2,086 foster carers and support workers on caring for the specialist safeguarding needs of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The training is equipping these carers with the skills they need to identify when a child is at risk of going missing to be onwards trafficked, of being exploited for economic, sexual, and criminal exploitation or of being exposed to radicalisation.
The information requested on the number of foster carers or support workers is not held centrally so we are unable to provide this as a proportion of the total foster carers and support workers.
Since 2016, recipients of the training have generally reported high levels of satisfaction with its quality. For the current tranche of training, 99% of those trained who provided feedback rated the training ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.