Fostering People's stress relief efforts this Stress Awareness Week

7th November is the start of Stress Awareness Week 2022.

We are all acutely aware of stress, the last few years have meant that no one has been immune to the impacts of stress from Covid-19 measures and long periods of lock down, worry about our health and that of loved ones.  As we’ve come out of this worrying time and learnt to live with Covid, this year we have all had stress and worry over our finances, from rising energy costs, food costs, rising inflation and rising mortgage rates.

We know how the stress we have all had to endure has implications for our mental health.  When it comes to the welfare of our fostering families we want to do everything we can to ensure our families can face rising costs whilst maintaining their exception care of children.

As a result we gave our foster parents one of the largest cost of living rises in our history back in April.  But we know since April, there has been even more economic uncertainly.  As a result we are giving our foster parents a further cost of living rise starting immediately and commit to making another rise in April 2023.

This means that our most common standard rate for a child over the age of 5 is now £452.13 per week, per child and for most foster parents, this is tax free.

We can’t eliminate against all aspects of stress on our lives, but it is important to us that we protect our families from one of the biggest causes of stress nationally, our finances.