Viennetta Basterfield, 67, spent two decades fostering more than 100 children in her west London home before she and her husband handed in the reins during Covid. Her own mother had died when she was nine and she was brought up by another woman who took her in. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to dedicate her life to passing that gift on to others.
Every single placement I was frightened because you think, are we going to be OK? Are they going to accept us?” she said. We still have a full house for Sunday dinners, for christmas, for birthdays.
On Wednesday, the government is launching the country’s first national foster carer recruitment campaign, due to declining numbers at a time when there is a growing number of children in care. The number of fostering households has dropped 10% since 2021, and the foster care population is ageing, with over one in three foster carers now aged 60 or over. The appeal will target adults in their 30s and 40s, urging them “to open their hearts and homes to some of the most vulnerable children in society”, with the aim of creating 10,000 new foster care places by the end of this parliament.
It will run alongside trials of new foster care models, such as short-term “respite fostering” or fostering at weekends, which the government hopes will make it accessible to a wider range of people. The children’s minister, Josh MacAlister, said he wanted the public to respond to the campaign in the same way many did to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, when hundreds opened their homes to refugees. We need that kind of moment, to prompt people to have conversations in their homes,” he said.
Just step forward and start the process and see where you go,” he said. She was put off the idea because of her husband’s job and feeling she had to “transform myself into a different type of person to be able to give foster care”. Fostering is the primary form of care for looked-after children in England.
Out of 81,770 looked-after children, there are about 56,400 children in foster care at any one time. New research by the Coram Institute for Children found over half a million adults want to foster and an estimated 3.4 million are interested. Dame Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said there was a “substantial pool of people who are open to becoming foster carers” and the charity welcomed the government’s ambitious plans to recruit more.
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