Foster Carers' Fees - Communication
Fostering
Devon continues to review the fees it pays foster carers across the county, with
the continued aim of ensuring fairness and consistency.
The
Project Team, which includes foster carers' representation, meets regularly to work together with other foster carers on this
challenging task.
Further
to the workshop event that took place in October last year, a workshop was held on 31 January 2018 with a cross section of foster carers representing all the
fee schemes.
This
2nd workshop allowed the attendees to further review the models
proposed in October and gain an understanding of the financial implications of
each model and if they met the criteria agreed in the previous workshop.
A
meeting was also held on 23 January 2018 with a number of carers from the ex
Family Care Workers Scheme to address their specific concerns and allow them to
put forward their views.
Further
financial modelling is continuing at a pace as the project team representatives
conduct a thorough analysis of the proposed models. This is proving a time
consuming exercise but one that is very worthwhile as we work with the foster
carers involved to ensure new fee models that are fair and consistent. As you
can imagine this is a complex process!
The
project team recognise the importance of ‘getting this right slowly’ against ‘rushing
to meet a deadline’. We are updating our Head of Service Darryl Freeman and our Chief Officer Jo Olsson routinely.
They are both clear we need to get this right for Devon’s children. With this
in mind, we will be reviewing the timeline for any changes and will update you
in future newsletters.
Throughout
this process, the project team has adopted an approach of ‘co-production’. We
have aimed to create a level playing field where everyone involved, including
foster carers from each scheme, have a voice, value each other and learn
together from the start of the process. The idea is to bring together different
perspectives to the design of the model and move away from simply voicing
personal perspectives and opinions to making something together and testing possible
solutions.
However
we recognise that many of you will not have had the opportunity to put forward
your views and comments. To deal with this, carer consultation events will be
held in due course once the work on the proposals are completed. These
consultation events will be held across Devon and dates and locations will be
published in future newsletters.
In
the meantime, we have set up an email inbox for those who wish to send us their
views and/or comments in advance of the consultation events. The address is childsc.fosteringallowancesconsultation-mailbox@devon.gov.uk
Once
we are at a stage of where decisions are needed on new models we will be
attending Devon’s Cabinet Committee for final decisions ahead of
implementation. This will be following the carer consultation events.
Best wishes, the Project Team
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