Sir, I cannot agree with Sir Cyril Taylor that more children in care should be placed in boarding schools (report, Mar 15).

A boarding school does not offer such children the individual year-round care they need, nor the opportunity to benefit from family life. And what happens during holidays? Professional foster carers cannot keep an unpaid placement open all year just to look after a child while a school is closed.

Instead, we must focus on a number of ideas. We need to tackle the shortage of 8,000 foster carers in England. Recruiting more foster carers will mean fewer children having to move schools and increased stability when they are in care. But foster carers must be adequately supported financially and practically, which is currently not often the case.

In 2005 we calculated that the Government must invest a further £616 million in English foster care. Such an investment could help to transform the educational achievements of children in public care. And the payback will be far more fostered children growing up to be happy, economically active and responsible citizens, with far fewer making demands on statutory services.

ROBERT TAPSFIELD
Chief Executive,
The Fostering Network
London SE1

Sir, Sir Cyril Taylor hits a vulnerable but, in my view, just the right spot. I was in care and went to a boarding school, for, like many other disadvantaged children after the war, there was nowhere else to go. In the care of charity schools run by Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa, the majority thrived under a well-disciplined but kindly regime that fitted one well morally and educationally for life ahead. All left with a qualification and many went on to be highly successful in their chosen careers.

When I left the services I rejoined the same charity as a director to find that the boarding schools had been replaced with housing care units where the emphasis was on allowing the young people to do what they thought was best for themselves, where education was an optional extra and where the care workers changed practically every month. With no discipline or continuity it is not surprising that these homes turned into places of containment rather than advancement and offered little hope for the future.

At a meeting of the charity trustees a few years ago, one of them, having scrutinised the accounts, said: “It would be cheaper to send them all off to Eton.” How right he was and still is.

PAUL BOLAS
Havant, Hants

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