Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 15 December 2017 to Question 117980, on foster care, how many organisations have adopted the foster-family-friendly employer policy since its inception.

In April 2014, the department became the government’s first foster-family-friendly employer, as we believe it is right that staff have extra support in balancing their work and caring responsibilities. Other government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, have since followed the Department for Education’s lead and introduced a similar policy.

We do not collect data on which organisations sign up to this commitment, but there is a list of foster-family-friendly employers on pages 21-23 of the ‘Combining Fostering and Other Work’ report (November 2014, The Fostering Network and the Department for Education).

To ensure even more support for foster carers, the government has recently committed to extending the additional 15 hours childcare allowance to foster carers taking on employment outside of the home ‎by September 2018.