Shortage Of Families Willing To Foster British Kids As Thousands Welcome Syrians

Around 250 children from Cardiff, Wales are housed outside of their home city, some as far away as northern England, because of a shortage of foster families in the Welsh capital. Meanwhile, 2000 British families have pledged to take Syrian refugees into their homes.

Cardiff City Council, desperate to bring the children back, will be launching a new campaign next week to recruit the 200 foster families needed to house them locally. The council’s fostering team told Wales Online that as well as adding strain to families and children, the financial burden of placing children outside the area is huge.

Resources are set to become even more stretched as the 20,000 refugees promised by David Cameron begin to arrive. If the Syrian refugees are allocated in a similar way to refugees housed between January and March this year, 1477 will be placed in Wales, according to an investigation by the Daily Express.

The appeal for local foster families will begin a week after hundreds took to the streets of Cardiff and Swansea to publicly make a show of their support for welcoming Syrian refugees into Britain.

Protester Nicola Quarry from Blackwood told Wales Online: “I would absolutely take people in my house. I have a spare room and I wouldn’t think twice about it. I’m surprised at how humanity has been so callous. The callous people in Britain who are opposed to the refugees coming in is what has shocked me the most in this whole situation.”

"I'm surprised at how humanity has been so callous.In 2015 how can children be drowning for safety," Nicola Quarry pic.twitter.com/qz8YLns5kH

— Heledd Pritchard (@HeleddPritchard) September 12, 2015

The message is clear refugees are welcome by many in Cardiff #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/XWfLV6dnxt

— Heledd Pritchard (@HeleddPritchard) September 12, 2015

It is unknown if Ms. Quarry will be so “callous” in her response to the council’s desperate plea to help house the 250 banished Welsh children.

Angela Bourge, operational manager for strategy commissioning and resources at Cardiff City Council, said: “Some of these children need to be placed outside of Cardiff but they’re in the minority.

“The majority are placed at that distance because at the time we didn’t have a foster carer in Cardiff for them. That means they’re placed away from their families, schools, friends and away from their community.

“A large proportion of these children are placed outside Wales and that loses their link with their Welsh heritage because they’re growing up in other parts of the country and that’s not our choice, that’s because we can’t recruit enough foster carers.”