Fostering allowance should be extended to adoptive parents, social welfare boss says

The head of Malta’s social welfare foundation has called for the allowance received by foster parents to be extended to also apply when the children in care are eventually adopted.

Under a proposed new law regulating fostering, foster carers will be allowed to possibly adopt children under their care after a period of five years, or, in exceptional circumstances, after three years.

Two years ago, the government raised the allowance given to foster carers from €70 to €100 weekly.

In view of the fact that foster carers would have a more realistic possibility of being able to adopt the children under their care sooner than before, Foundation for Social Welfare Services CEO Alfred Grixti proposed that the allowance they received while fostering be extended to when they become adoptive parents.

This, Grixti said, would help the new adoptive parents cope with the financial expenses of taking care of the children, which they previously fostered, on a permanent basis.

Grixti who was addressing a conference on foster care on Friday, also underlined that foster care should never be turned into a private service, that the training given to foster carers should be improved, and that a campaign to promote fostering should continue.

He noted that, according to statistics from December 2018, there a currently 586 minors in alternative care placements. Of these, 222 are with non-familial foster carers, 116 are in kinship care, and 248 are cared for in children’s homes.

Acknowledging that children’s homes were giving a valuable service to society, Grixti said that Malta nonetheless had to continue rising up to the challenge of taking fostering to the next level, and finding a place in foster care for the 248 minors being cared for in residential institutions.

Law in final implementation stages

Addressing the conference, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the new law - the Children Protection Act - which, amongst other areas, regulates foster care, was in its final stages of implementation.

He said that it was often very hard for foster parents who had to let go of children in their care for them to be returned to their foster parents. Likewise, he acknowledged that, for some natural parents, it was very difficult to have to see their children taken from them and placed into foster care.

The Prime Minster also addressed the conference

Decisions on such matters were so sensitive, Muscat remarked, that it was easier to decide on complicated things such as taxes and infrastructure instead of on such issues.

"It is experts who have to take the decision [on whether it is best for a child to remain with their foster or natural parents]. [...] Only they have the necessary tools to make such a determination," Muscat said.

"There is no rule of thumb on this... every story is a world unto itself," he said.

Muscat also made reference to the increased costs parents who take on foster children had to bear, highlighting that the government had increased the allowance granted to such carers to €100 weekly to help with expenses.