Foster Carers -Professional Salary

poet123

I agree the salary quoted by you is not unreasonable,but it is well above the national average. My worry is that people who would not normally be able to earn that amount may see caring for children as an easy option to attain that salary scale. It is a difficult conundrum to pay a rate commensurate with the demands of the job yet not so much that it is more attractive to the wrong people.
I recently watched a "living in the sun" programme,where the family were moving to Spain to set up a nursery....the female carer said this was the ideal job for Spain as one could sumbathe whilst looking after children. So she obviously was in it primarily for the money and the perceived sunbathing time,not to provide nursery education. It was a means to an end.

I disagree that you can equate the motivation of a foster care to the "we all only work for the money" issue. To work in a factory,office,shop,etc you are required to do the job to an acceptable level. There is no empathy or emotion required,the end result may be a spreadsheet,a tender,a contract, not a childs life and wellbeing.

I suppose what I am saying is that to be an all round foster carer is much like teaching,nursing etc,a caring profession or vocation.

My worry is that whilst such salaries will allow those people who have previously posted here (and sound ideally suited to the job) to investigate the possibility of donng this type of work,it will also bring out of the woodwork those who under other circumstances would not evn have considered it.

Oldernotwiser

poet123 wrote: »

I disagree that you can equate the motivation of a foster care to the "we all only work for the money" issue. To work in a factory,office,shop,etc you are required to do the job to an acceptable level. There is no empathy or emotion required,the end result may be a spreadsheet,a tender,a contract, not a childs life and wellbeing.

I suppose what I am saying is that to be an all round foster carer is much like teaching,nursing etc,a caring profession or vocation.

My worry is that whilst such salaries will allow those people who have previously posted here (and sound ideally suited to the job) to investigate the possibility of donng this type of work,it will also bring out of the woodwork those who under other circumstances would not evn have considered it.

But lots of people go into the caring professions because they can be comparatively well paid; it doesn't mean that they're bad at their jobs. I do understand your concerns but it really is quite difficult to become a foster parent of these kinds of kids and I doubt that many people with the wrong attitude would slip through the net. At your very earliest meetings to discuss fostering you tend to be given the picture "warts and all" and many people will run a mile when they hear how things will be. It really isn't like having a couple of your children's friends to live with you (unless your children know some seriously disturbed kids with multiple problems.)

Dammam

Well, if I may comment as an ex (but still qualified) foster carer.
1. The money is great, but this is for 24 hour care of vulnerable and often troubled children. The payment from the council is still way less than what it would cost them privately.
2. You are open to all sorts of accusations from either kids or their parents. At this point, the level of support from the council drops dramatically and you are left to fight your own corner in the interest of council impartiality. Not happened to me thank God.
3. if you have kids of your own, they invariably suffer.
4. The biggest cash 'incentive' are for the biggest 'problem' - teenagers with attitude. If you can cope with your own teenage kids you sometimes deserve a medal, if you cope with someone elses with all sorts of emotional problems then you deserve a kings ransom.
5. Time for yourself? Forget it. This isn't 9-5 stuff.
6. the 'rigorous' training was ridiculously easy in my opinion. There again, I had no skeletons in the cupboard and maybe if I did then they would have been weedled out. The most important training was on safe care issues, which is actually for YOUR protection rather than the childs.
7. None of the foster carers I have come into contact with have done it without 90% of the consideration being money - you'd be surprised at how well most know every trick in the book to get maximum allowance. That's not to say they don't care - some have actually adopted their charges - but money will nearly always be the driving force, not a sense of vocation.

Still, I generalise from my own experience. You can live very comfortably by fostering, and a long overdue professional payment will make it a lot easier. But it's no easy ride and if you take a long term placement on and decide you don't like it after all then you should be shot - you're responsible for young lives and futures and can't just pick 'em up and throw 'em away when it gets too much - that's why they're where they are now!

Do a LOT of homework and put a LOT of thought into this before taking it on. It's a huge commitment. If you're right for the role though, it's rewarding on many, many levels.

redballoon_2

Thanks Dammam for posting that, it has given me a good insite from a carers point of view.

I have been thinking about fostering for well over a year now, i had applied for an info pack, read it then didnt return. recently i have got another application pack and now serioulsy contemplating it. not cos of this "salary" that they may be giving to carers, but the fact that I work in Education and Childrens dept for my local council and want to do more in the caring side of things but am not qualified to apply for a support worker role or similar.

I am hoping to send the form off this week (how scarey is that?) i have lots of questions that i need answering or clarifying. I am hoping that they would support me in obtaining an NQV at the same time. I dont know if they would be able to fund this or if it would be something that i would have to pay for myself which i am quite happy to do. I do have a child development gcse (~not that it really equates to something?)

I am kinda worried about the financial side of things (thats why i'm an mse member!) I dont want to live a lavish lifestyle from fostering but want to make sure that i will be able to pay the bills etc.. and get by. It helps now hubby is working full time. we can pay the bills using used his wage

Oldernotwiser

Damman, your experiences equate 100% with my own. I think I really meant that the selection was rigorous, the training was easy but I do think that it would have weeded out the unsuitable.

Redballoon,I've never heard of anyone doing NVQs but that doesn't mean that it's not possible. If you don't already have a full Level 2 qualification you could do an NVQ independently for free as long as you had the relevant experience to go alongside this. It's good that you can live on your husband's salary as there can be gaps between placements, especially if you do short term care. Try to talk to foster carers locally and find out what level of support you can expect; it can vary enormously. Think about the age group you're interested in fostering, but don't narrow it down too much. What level of challenge can you cope with? One or more children? Don't worry about doing it for the money; it is a full time job and you'll earn every penny of it, believe me!

Good luck.

Dammam

redballoon wrote: »

Thanks Dammam for posting that, it has given me a good insite from a carers point of view.

I have been thinking about fostering for well over a year now, i had applied for an info pack, read it then didnt return. recently i have got another application pack and now serioulsy contemplating it. not cos of this "salary" that they may be giving to carers, but the fact that I work in Education and Childrens dept for my local council and want to do more in the caring side of things but am not qualified to apply for a support worker role or similar.

I am hoping to send the form off this week (how scarey is that?) i have lots of questions that i need answering or clarifying. I am hoping that they would support me in obtaining an NQV at the same time. I dont know if they would be able to fund this or if it would be something that i would have to pay for myself which i am quite happy to do. I do have a child development gcse (~not that it really equates to something?)

I am kinda worried about the financial side of things (thats why i'm an mse member!) I dont want to live a lavish lifestyle from fostering but want to make sure that i will be able to pay the bills etc.. and get by. It helps now hubby is working full time. we can pay the bills using used his wage

If it helps, in our area a number of carers were doing NVQ's and were actively encouraged by the council, so you may well find you're in luck.

I'd also like to point out to anyone looking in on fostering for the first time that although the private fostering agencies offer much higher renumeration, they are invariably passed the children that Council employed carers don't want - generally because of behavioural problems etc. As a council carer, you have more option to turn down a placement that you feel wouldn't be suitable for you - I don't believe that private carers are afforded such luxuries. Horses for courses I guess.

robpw2

it takes a special kind of person to do foster caring and its not about being driven by money , its about giving love to children who need it . I think that its great they are finally paying for them but alas you will now get people doing it just to earn the cash .

ANNIEHAHA

Dont know if anyone has mentioned it, but it is possible to foster on short term, to give the family a break, i.e a week or two.
This may help people seriously considering it, as a way of dipping your toe in, before taking on a long term charge. So you can get a feel if its for you, and you can continue doing short terms if you find it more preferable.
I hope this helps someone

jetcat

from someone was both fostered then worked as a social worker placing 'hard to place' children and young people, throught i would add my twopenneth!!
in my experience (and only one small local authority to by no means fully representative) the high salary foster carers are those with the independent fostering agencies. These agencies (the ones i worked with) seems a lot more supportive of their carers, and made sure they were looked after just as much as the children!!

The majority of the young people placed were 11+, with EXTREMELY challenging behaviours. It just breaks your heart, as you can see where their problems stem from, but it takes a very skilled person to be able to fully engage with such a troubled person. Def worth every penny in my book!

On the other hand, our local authority carers (those who supposedly had more specialised training than the 'general' carers) only received half of what the independent carers got. As for the general carers - it was pitiful!!! I think things have changed now though (this was a couple of years ago).

A lot of our hard to place kids ended up in specialised residential units (again, private sector) after numerous foster placeemnts failed. Government targets state that no child should have more than three placements in their care career, some of our kids were going through that a week!!!

From a personal point of view, i had both good and bad foster carers, and one quite openly told me that she was only doing it for the money!!! I subsequently left 4 days before Xmas :rolleyes:

Good luck to those wanting to foster, just make sure that support arrangments are in place 24/7, as there are some kids who (lovely as they are most of the time) know how to play the system and will 'kick off' in the middle of the night, as they know resources are limited!!!

After all that - can i finish with saying that there is a real shortage of any foster carers, i remember one girl in particular, who had had numerous placements all break down, and in the end, it was a friday night, and we had no placement at all for her. So, i took her to Blackpool for the weekend!!!!! We had a fab time, and yes she was challenging at times, but i knew that it was only for a weekend. I am not sure how i would of coped knowing that it was long term.

All kids, should they want to, should be given the chance to live in a family!!!!

(sorry for the essay!!!)

louise_1981

thanks for that guys

I am looking into fostering with my OH, and it is good to see both sides that have been posted on MSE and around the net.

I am a little frightened that our ages will put ss off. 26 and 29, however, we are both secondary teachers, but I suppose the only way to see would be to contact ss