To ask the Minister of Health (i) to detail the number of foster carers, broken down by constituency in each of the last five years; and (ii) for his assessment of the trend of the prevalence of foster carers.

The number of foster carers in Northern Ireland is routinely collected at Health and Social Care (HSC) Trust level only; therefore, to obtain this information by constituency would be at a disproportionate cost. The number of foster carers in Northern Ireland, by HSC Trust, is set out in Table 1.

Table 1: Number of foster carers in Northern Ireland by HSC Trust (2017-2021)

Source: Health and Social Care Board, Delegated Statutory Function/Corporate Parenting Returns.

The data in Table 1 refers to kinship and non-kinship foster carers who have been approved by a panel, as well as specialist fee-paid foster carers. In addition, at 31 March 2021 there were 211 foster carers who had been approved by independent foster agencies; 45 specialist foster carers who provide care only to children with a disability; and 212 carers who were undergoing a process of being assessed as kinship carers.

(ii) At 31 March 2021, there were 3,530 children in care, of whom 2,857 (81%) were in foster care. From 31 March 2017 to 31 March 2021, the number of children in care increased by 18%. Over the same period, the number of HSC Trust-approved foster carers increased by 21%. Although it may seem that the number of foster carers is keeping pace with the number of children who require to be cared for, it is notable that—while the number of kinship carers has increased by 46% between March 2017 and March 2021—the number of non-kinship foster carers has increased by only 8% over the same period.

It is essential that the Health and Social Care system continues to provide support to existing carers and encourage much-needed new carers to come forward. Efforts to recruit and retain foster carers are led by the regional HSCNI Adoption and Foster Care service. In addition to ongoing recruitment activity throughout the year, my Department has also lent support to a number of targeted campaigns, most recently an appeal for foster carers and supported lodgings hosts for young refugees. In addition, to help support foster carers and sustain foster placements, £1.39m of Departmental funding was made available to foster carers over two 12 week periods in 2020/21. In March this year, I also announced an additional support package for foster carers; this was backdated to cover a 12 week period from January 2022 to March 2022.