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This @BBCNews “news” piece on foster care is a PRIME example of how our profession is misrepresented in the news, with massively damaging effects for carers and children.
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We were surprised to hear Steve Christie, MD of @NFG_Fostering tell people to apply to be foster carers because “it’s a nice way to earn a living” while “working from home” (from 4.30 on the video)
That’ll be news to the ⅓ foster carers who get *no fee at all* from fostering - only an allowance to pay for the children themselves - and the vast majority who make far less than the minimum wage (p.19) https://www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk/sites/www.fostering.net/files/content/stateofthenationsfostercarefullreport.pdf
Meanwhile, we’re refused worker status, denying us sick pay, pensions or job security. This leaves us in incredibly precarious positions - such as one carer who, when contracting Covid-19, turned paramedics away to avoid losing her income and her children https://fosteriwgb.co.uk/2020/04/09/what-happens-when-a-foster-carer-gets-sick/
Although rewarding, fostering is very demanding. Children in care have often experienced trauma and need skilled, patient support from expert carers. As one member explains, suggesting anyone with a spare room should do it undermines the work we do. https://fosteriwgb.co.uk/2020/05/08/more-than-just-a-spare-room-and-a-big-heart-thisisfostering/
Foster carers are, and should be viewed, as professionals - just as teaching and nursing is both a profession and a vocation. While we need to be paid properly, it is both misleading and wrong to sell fostering as a way to get easy money.
Meanwhile, although no carer would - or should - go into fostering for the money, people like Steve Christie aren’t doing badly at all. In their latest accounts, @NFG_Fostering ‘s MD took home a quarter of a million pounds https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03127814/filing-history
And in their latest accounts, his company made 4 million in one year. That’s public money that could have been spent on children and carers. It would take a foster carer on the average £1.70 an hour over a thousand years to make that much.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03127814/filing-history
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03127814/filing-history
But the big winner here isn’t even the agency itself, it’s the tax-dodging private equity companies who OWN the private fostering agencies. @NFG_Fostering is owned by Stirling Square Capital Partners, in turn run by multi-millionaire Stefano Bonfiglio.
Bonfiglio is the kind of rich that means his lavish wedding to Ex-Goldman Sach’s banker Carolina Gonzalez-Bunster was featured in Vogue https://www.vogue.com/article/carolina-gonzalez-bunster-stefano-bonfiglio-wedding-dominican-republic
Private agencies like the national fostering group ARE often able to offer better fees to carers, and it’s no wonder that many choose to work for them, instead of getting the poverty wages (or no wages at all) offered by Local Authoritiess.
But by siphoning money from the public sector into the hands of rich bankers, private firms like the @NFG_Fostering impoverish the foster care sector, harming carers and children in the process. One of our members explains more here: https://leftfootforward.org/2020/06/while-children-and-carers-struggle-to-get-by-big-finance-cashes-in-on-foster-care/
Steve’s right about one thing: foster care is in crisis. But we’ll only solve that by getting rid of profit-seeking and treating carers with the respect and rights they deserve.
We want to send solidarity to all our fellow foster carers out there who saw this news piece and felt misrepresented and under-valued. If you want to change this broken system, now’s the time to join the union: https://iwgb.org.uk/join
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