Fostering alcohol guidance

Many foster carers consume alcohol as part of ordinary daily life.  This guidance is designed to enable carers to do so safely within their fostering role, both preventing negative impact for children and ensuring for maintaining health.

As adults caring for children in care, we need to be mindful of:

• Our position as role models. Foster carers and other professionals that consume alcohol have a professional responsibility to drink responsibly. Children learn through our conduct and will likely mirror our behaviour.
• The impact of alcohol on reasoning and judgement. We have a professional responsibility to have full capacity when caring for children in care. Alcohol impairs judgement, it reduces the functioning of the pre-frontal cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for higher-order cognitive processing (including reasoning and judgment). This leads people to be less inhibited and more impulsive.
• Seeing adults consume alcohol can be triggering for our children. Children may have come from homes in which the adults misused substances and it may be distressing for them to see us use alcohol and be under the influence.

Health guidance for regular alcohol consumption

• men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis
• spread your drinking over 3 or more days if you regularly drink as much as 14 units a week

Alcohol units - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

Binge drinking

More than 8 units of alcohol in a single session for males, or more than 6 units in a single session for females is the technical definition of binge drinking.

We know that the risks of short-term harms like accidents or injuries increase between two to five times as a result of drinking between 5 and 7 units of alcohol in a single drinking session, compared with not drinking any alcohol at all.

You become more vulnerable when you are drunk. The sorts of things that are more likely to happen if you drink a lot in a short space of time include accidents resulting in injury, misjudging risky situations or losing self-control. If you binge drink, you are likely to lose coordination, have impaired judgement and slower reaction times. Serious health risks from binge drinking include breathing problems, seizures, and brain damage.5

Binge drinking | Drinkaware

Sharing alcohol with children

Regarding alcohol and under 18s. It is illegal to:

• Sell alcohol to under 18s
• For under 18s to buy or try to buy alcohol
• For an adult to buy or try to buy alcohol for an under 18
• For an under 18 to drink alcohol in licensed premises (such as pub or restaurant).
• Give alcohol to children under 5.

Alcohol and young people - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Health advice for giving alcohol to children

The NHS advises that children should not drink alcohol before the age of 18. If they do it should not be until the age of 15, rarely and with a parent or carer.

With the above information in mind, Coventry's Fostering Service requests that foster carers and connected carers:

Please:

• Do not drink binge drink when caring for children
• Do not drink in such a way that you are incapacitated when caring for a child
• Do not drink above 14 units a week.
• Do not drink and drive.
• Do not provide alcohol to children under 15
• Only provide one drink to children over 15 on special occasions and with supervision

Safeguarding

If a foster carer has been found to be intoxicated in the sole care of a child or in the presence of a child in care (regardless of the child’s age) the fostering service will review the impact and potential impact of this on children.  This could include safeguarding processes such as the allegations procedure or the standards of care process.

Safer caring

Carers who consume alcohol are likely to have alcohol in the family home.  In accordance with the safer caring guidance, this needs to be kept away from children. Carers are advised to know how much alcohol they have at any given time as they are accountable for safeguarding children against misusing any alcohol from the family home.