Foster families need generosity and love, but also fair pay | Letters
Jimmy Johnstone touches on the wider issue of the need to professionalise foster care (Foster care saves lives. Our work deserves employment rights, theguardian.com, 23 October). At a time when CAMHS waiting lists stretch to months even for priority cases (I know this, I'm a GP) foster carers provide what is often the only therapeutic input to the most vulnerable children with the greatest needs in our society.
Basic "skills to foster" training is now typically delivered over two weekends and augmented in an ad hoc way with whatever other continuing development training is available locally. Like Mr Johnstone, my wife and I are carers on the specialist scheme, designed to provide home-based care for looked-after children with the most complex and enduring difficulties. These are the children we try to nurture in a permanent family. To qualify for the specialist scheme one of us (my wife) must have no other employment. We are paid at the highest rate of any foster carers and we get two weeks' paid leave annually. Calculated on an hourly rate, this remuneration package is around a third of the current minimum wage. To properly train and pay foster carers would be expensive for the state, though these costs would be offset by better lives for the cohort of young people who currently leave care destined to make up around half of the prison population. These children, and the foster families who care for them, should be valued much more.
John Macleod
GP, Bristol