New provisions on the disclosure of information
Adoption and Children Bill
11:30 am
Mark Ferrero:
Essentially, we are dealing with private arrangements. There is a balance to be struck between a private arrangement and the role of the state in such circumstances. We have a legal framework in place that requires notification of these arrangements. However, we have still to raise general public awareness. We just referred to a leaflet that was aimed at professionals. It was aimed not only at social services professionals, but at all professionals that come into contact with children in the community, such as health care professionals and so on. We need to raise public consciousness of the need to notify a private fostering arrangement to the same level as it is on childminding. Everybody knows that the local authority has a legitimate role in childminding. There is not a good general public awareness of the need, the role and the responsibility of social services in private fostering cases.
To go back to the registration point, I still am not convinced that creating a registration arrangement would mean that more private foster carers would come forward to be registered. If they do not notify now, what in a registration scheme would make them come forward to register?