Top fostering priorities in your new role as Children's Minister

Dear Mr Goodwill I would like to welcome you to the post of Minister of State for Children and Families. I am a foster carer. We work hard to ensure that fostered children have a positive experience of family life, support them to have high aspirations, to overcome the challenges of their early lives and to achieve their very best. However, foster carers face challenges on a daily basis and often are not properly recognised, valued or supported. As the new Children’s Minister, I would like to draw your attention to the following issues, which need addressing as a matter of urgency.
Fostering stocktake
The stocktake is a great opportunity to set out what a successful, thriving foster carer system would look like for foster carers and fostered children and young people. It is vital that this piece of work is prioritised and that it tackles the big issues such as respect, training, support and the remuneration of foster carers so that it can have long-lasting positive implications for fostering. You can read The Fostering Network's stocktake submission <a href="https://www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk/policy-practice/policies/national-fostering-stocktake-england">here</a>.
Charter
Foster carers are key members of the team around the children, and yet all too often, are not recognised as such. Left out of key meetings, not given information about the child, not listened to - much needs to be done to improve the status of foster carers. I would like you to ensure that every fostering service has an up-to-date <a href="https://www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk/policy-practice/policies/foster-carers-charter">foster carers’ charter</a> which sets out the roles and responsibilities of services and carers. 
Help children and foster carers to 'keep connected’
Foster carers have a crucial role to play in supporting children as they move on, whether this is a move home or a move to a permanent placement. Children in care are likely to have previously experienced loss and maintaining good relationships can matter more than anything else to these children.
However, children are being prevented from having contact with their former foster carers which is damaging to their social and emotional development, educational achievement and mental health.
There is an urgent need to introduce guidance and regulations that require that children and young people in care are enabled to remain in contact with their former foster carers and that foster carers are enabled to support their former fostered children as they move home, move to a permanent placement, or move into and through the leaving care process. You can read more about this <a href="https://www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk/sites/www.fostering.net/files/uploads/pdf/keep_connected_4_feb_v2.pdf">here</a>.
 Staying put minimum allowance
Foster carers have long argued that children in foster care need to be supported beyond the age of 18, and so were delighted with the introduction of staying put. However, fostering services are too reliant on the goodwill of foster carers and the majority of carers will see a drop in the allowances they receive. This means that foster carers either need to make up the difference, or that they are unable to continue caring for their young person. Financial concerns must never prevent a young person being able to take up the opportunity to stay with their foster carer after they turn 18, and foster carers must never be financially worse off because they offer a staying put placement. Please prioritise the introduction of a national minimum staying put allowance.