Keeping Children safe in foster care

Foster carers who look after vulnerable children have as their highest priority protecting children form harm and keeping them safe. They aim to provide these children a "childhood" in the true sense of the world where they can be "children", shielded from the responsibilities and pressures that they have often had to deal with in their birth families.

Foster carers can do this by many different means, but primarily by providing a warm and nurturing home where a child is made to feel important and his or her needs are listened to. On the other hand, and equally important for making children feel safe, foster cares need to ensure there are clear boundaries in place so that children know exactly what they are allowed to do. For example they need to be clear about when they should be back home in the evening or from school, when homework is expected to be completed during the evening, what behaviour is acceptable in the home (and outside the home) and what is not. Children will learn about acceptable behaviour through being subject to these clear boundaries, and this will help them feel safe because a trusted adult is "in charge". Children will gain in self esteem through being nurtured and listened to.

Foster carers can protect children from potential harm by supervising them well, saying "no" when a child pushes the boundaries or wishes to meet with unsuitable people. However when a child is "meeting" people via the internet, it is not so easy to supervise them, particularly when foster carers are generally of a generation which has been missed out in terms of their knowledge of technology and the internet.

For some years now, Local Authorities have been asking fostercare agency's to provide children with computers and internet access to assist them with homework. Many Local Authorities actually purchase lap tops for their looked after children, and these are of course kept in the child's foster home. Clearly, looked after children should not be disadvantaged through lack of access to computers, which are now seen as a household necessity rather than an added extra. However there is a down side to this, something which is a problem in all households, not just fostering households. Many of our foster carers have observed children becoming "glued" to their lap tops, wanting to take them with them every where they go, including to their rooms at bed time. This can almost lead to an obsession for some children, who use chat rooms to make friends - friends that their carers never meet and so are unable to vet. Sadly, lap tops and mobile phones are fast becoming the bane of many foster carers lives, and in this agency they are cited as one of the most common causes of boundary-testing and conflict in the foster home. Not only might children be making relationships with unsuitable people; given half a chance they are "chatting" through the night, mobile or lap top under the duvet, losing sleep and ultimately starting school the next day tired and unprepared.

Foster carers need to be helped to set the house rules early on in a child's life so that computers and phones are never taken to bed at night, and are always used in communal areas within the home, so that there is at least some loose supervision of what is going on. They also need regular training to keep up with the technology and prevent children using undesirable and/or adult websites. We offer fostercare training on this subject, and provide them with useful websites that offer parental advice on keeping youngsters safe.