Fostering provides stability, a safe and loving home and an alternative family environment for look-after children. One of the essential messages from the report is that foster care is working for many vulnerable children and young people in England, and I think that needs to be celebrated. The UK Government is considering the recommendations set out in the review. I am informed it will publish a formal response later in the year.
As you may be aware, fostering is a devolved issue and so it is for the Scottish Parliament to decide on policy in this area. Likewise, this report does not cover the Scottish fostering system. The Scottish Conservatives have called for a number of reforms, and I am concerned that Scotland may still be lacking enough foster families.
Scotland is the only part of the UK without a statutory minimum standard of financial support for foster carers, and too many councils are shunning their responsibilities in this area. We cannot have a situation in which foster carers potentially have to subsidise their fostering, and my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament have raised this with the Scottish Government.
I agree that families often lack the support they need, including the opportunity to meet with other adopters. I would like to see the Scottish Government taking further action in this area, as well as doing more to change attitudes around adoption. I would like to see the creation of an adoption/fostering tsar in Scotland, who would be tasked with coordinating and encouraging efforts to not only raise the profile of adoption, but also make the case to ministers of the needs of foster carers.