Examples of how much carers are paid have been made available by The City of Edinburgh Council as part of a campaign to tackle the myths surrounding foster care. Caring full time for children, whist being extremely rewarding, can also provide a good income and concerns have been raised that there may be a lack of awareness about this. Adverts were put out on TV during recent peak -time TV shows in an effort to attract some more recruits.
There is currently a severe shortage of foster carers in Edinburgh and more are needed to provide children with safe and caring homes while they are unable to live with their own families.
City Children & Families Leader Councillor, Marilyne MacLaren, said:-“A carer can have a huge impact on a child’s life, improving their confidence and helping them towards a happy future but we don’t expect that this comes without cost. We want to remind people that we do pay carers and, that for the right person, fostering could be a fantastic new career.
“Our foster care team are working hard to encourage more people to become carers but we still need lots of people from different walks of life to tackle the current shortage.”
Carers get paid as self-employed people by the Council and receive a fee, allowances, full training and ongoing support. Depending on the type of caring work taken on, the rewards can be around the level of a well paid full-time job. Carers also get funds to provide pocket money and to buy Christmas presents.
The Council offers a range of opportunities for carers to suit different circumstances. Foster carers could be single, in a couple, married, straight or gay and may or may not already have children. They can be a tenant or a home-owner, live in a flat or a house and may or may not be in paid employment.
The most important thing is that carers have patience, resilience, a sense of humour and can offer a loving home to a child/children.
Carers are needed for babies and young children under five, over fives, teenagers, children with emotional and behavioural problems, children from ethnic minority backgrounds and children with disabilities. To find out more, including full information on allowances and fees please visit www.edinburgh.gov.uk/fostering or phone 0800 174 833.
Here are a couple of examples of how much you might expect to be paid if you are interested in becoming a foster carer:-
Foster care
Specialist disability care
Fostering is a very rewarding job, it is also a very challenging one . What is not mentioned is that these fees are only paid while you have children. There can be long period of time where you will not receive any payments.
Another thing that the social work will tell you is that you will receive plenty of support when you need it.
Don’t believe a word of it. Fostering can be very rewarding when things are going well but can utterly ruin your life if things don’t go so well.
The social workers don’t however like to tell the public about this side of things.
Do the Social Services ever warn people about the potential of having allegations made against them. Do they tell prospective carers if this happens that they will be completely alienated and kept in the dark till they complete any enquiries. Do they think that after treating Carers this way that the carer will still feel valued by the authority even if they were proved innocent of the allegation.
Do they mention how incredibly over the top they expect carers to be with regards to ‘safer caring’ and do they ever take any other advice from people who actually know what is best for the children.
There is definately a problem within the care system alright and it is very much of the Social Services own making.
Comments are closed.