To ask the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to detail what support, including financial, is afforded to foster parents and kinship carers for children within their care.

All foster carers and formal kinship foster carers receive Foster Care Allowances; are allocated a supervising social worker to provide support and supervision; have access to a range of specialist and therapeutic supports as determined by the assessed needs of the child/young person; are provided with a range of learning and development opportunities as well as educational support for children in their care. In an informal kinship care arrangement, parental responsibility remains with the parent as does the responsibility to provide financial support. Within such arrangements, there is an entitlement to support services and a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in those arrangements who are deemed to be “in need”, within the definition of The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995.