Foster parents are discouraged from hugging or cuddling the children they are bringing up, a scathing report found yesterday.
They are deterred from showing affection by warnings in official guidance about the risk of sex abuse, it said.
The review of foster care blamed ministers for ‘encouraging’ the bar on hugging, which affects more than 50,000 children who are living with temporary foster families after being taken into state care.
The inquiry said foster parents are also hamstrung by rules that mean they are not allowed to make everyday decisions such as taking a child for a haircut or to have their ears pierced.
Foster parents are discouraged from hugging or cuddling the children they are bringing up, a scathing report found yesterday
Children have been told not to call their foster parents Mum and Dad and couples have been warned they are not foster parents but merely foster carers. ‘When carers want to love a child, they should not be discouraged by formal guidance or feel intimidated by the remote threat of allegations,’ the report said.
Foster parents were taught to fear allegations of sexual misconduct and often ‘believed that demonstrations of physical affection were frowned upon’, it said. One foster mother was met with disapproval when she kissed a baby’s tummy after changing its nappy.
Foster fathers were even discouraged from picking up a child from school or an evening out by instructions that said: ‘Carers should be aware of the possible risks of being alone in a car with a foster child.’ Advice that children should not go into a carer’s bed were not right ‘for an infant or toddler who will often value the comfort that can bring, particularly when ill or after nightmares.’
The report said: ‘Department for Education guidance and regulations are silent on this key issue and such silence must encourage the view that physical affection is considered inappropriate.’
It called on ministers to say that foster parents ‘should not curb the natural instinct to demonstrate personal and physical warmth’.
The report, by former Barnardo’s chief Sir Martin Narey and social work adviser Mark Owers, effectively called for a revolution in the treatment of foster families who bring up three quarters of the children under state care at a cost to local councils of £1.7billion a year. It called for teams of social workers to be removed from the lives of foster families, freeing them from bureaucracy and saving millions in taxpayers’ money. Each foster family should in future be supervised by just one social worker.
It said foster families should provide permanent rather than temporary homes for children removed from abusive or incompetent natural parents. Social workers should stop insisting that the children regularly see the natural parents from whom they have been removed.
Birth parents should no longer have a say over children’s lives – for example by having the right to decide when their child should have a haircut. Foster parents should be encouraged to adopt children, it said.
The review of foster care blamed ministers for ‘encouraging’ the bar on hugging, which affects more than 50,000 children who are living with temporary foster families
The report, commissioned by the Department for Education, praised the efforts of foster parents, saying the children they bring up do well at school given their poor start in life.
It said attempts by fostering organisations and trade unions to turn foster parents into paid independent professionals must be resisted because ‘we want foster carers who will be as biased and tenacious in pursuing the interests of their foster child as many of us are in pursuing the interests of our own children’.
The report added: ‘When we first heard of a carer having to get social worker permission for minor issues such as allowing a child to have a haircut, we thought we were listening to exceptional occurences. Sadly this was not the case.’
The inquiry found that, contrary to regular claims that there is a crisis in foster care, foster parents are successful and there is no shortage of people willing to foster. Foster parents are also well paid, it said.
One level of bureacracy, independent reviewing officers, should be abolished entirely, the inquiry recommended. Together with savings from more efficient use of agencies, this would help save taxpayers more than £100million a year, it said.
Children and families minister Nadhim Zahawi said: ‘We welcome this thorough and insightful report.
‘We will carefully consider the review’s recommendations to determine how they can help us to make sustainable improvements to the fostering system and to the outcomes for looked after children.’