Is Foster care a work activity with respect to health and safety responsibilities?
Fostering is a fast changing environment and roles and employment status may be evolving, relationships, which exist today, may be very different from past experiences of this activity. Foster carers are deemed to be self employed for tax purposes (as defined by DfES who oversee the Fostering Regs). Foster carers have to be registered with a fostering service whether it’s LA, independent or voluntary and go through rigorous amount of assessments to ensure their suitability to foster children, trained, and followed by monitoring and supervision. Under the Care Standards Act 2000 enforcement can be taken against a fostering service. From HSE’s point of view, the employment status of individual foster carers has to be determined on individual case to determine whether there are responsibilities under health and safey legislation. However, as this area of work is already regulated by other enforcement bodies it is not an activity that HSE would become involved in on a regular basis.
