Fostering power

Today, the UK faces a major retention and recruitment crisis in foster care, and carers in different parts of the country continue to campaign for higher funding.

In September 2024, Northumberland County Council confirmed that it was reviewing payments to foster carers, which have been frozen for over ten years, following calls from campaigners.

Having studied the experiences of foster carers in the 17^th century, Cambridge historian Emily Rhodes argues that these struggles have a long history and that England’s early foster carers had more authority than we might expect.

Rhodes, a researcher at Christ's College, Cambridge, studied a rare collection of surviving petitions submitted to the Lancashire quarter sessions courts between 1660 and 1720.

In a study published in The History of the Family journal, Rhodes reveals the experiences of thirty-eight women who cared for non-kin children for their parish. Traditionally, this work has been called ‘boarding’ or ‘tabling’ but Rhodes says:

“There are very clear similarities between then and now and we should view these women as early foster carers. People in authority looked at family situations and judged whether it was appropriate for a child. When they decided it wasn’t, they sought to place them in a new home, ideally with somebody from their local community, and they compensated this person to look after the child.”

“These women provided such a vital role that when they weren’t paid enough or at all, they had enough authority to approach their county justices, powerful men, and successfully argue their case.”

“Today’s foster carers and the rest of society should know that even 350 years ago this role was essential and respected in society, and that women had power in the system. Every social safety net relies on determined individuals, we all need to remember that.”

Most of the women Rhodes encountered in the petitions would have been entitled to poor relief in their own right. In the 17^th century, the Old Poor Laws supported a system of relief in England which saw parishioners contributing to a local pot of funds which churchwardens and overseers of the poor allocated to the needy in the parish.

Some needy or orphaned children were made apprentices but others were placed with a woman in the community, typically a widow or a mother, but sometimes unmarried women. For this work, women expected to receive payment from the parish. As a result, they were both recipients of poor relief and administrators of the poor laws.

Emily Rhodes said: “These petitions give voice to some of the most inaccessible women in history. They've left a very small footprint but they played a crucial role in society.”

In their petitions, women often accused their local authorities of mismanagement and dishonesty. Three quarters petitioned because they were not receiving the promised rate and nearly one third requested an increase in pay. None of the petitions were rejected but Rhodes cautions that fewer failed petitions may have survived.

Rhodes said: “The state needed to keep these carers satisfied so the justices, the higher authority, overwhelmingly sided with them and opposed mistreatment by local authorities.”

In 1690s Preston, Alice Brewer of Lea battled her parish for years as they cut and withheld payments to care for Anne Helme, 'a poor distressed child’ who had lived with her for 14 years. Alice complained that ‘the town was pleased to differ & wrangle with your poor petitioner and to lessen and altogether deny the payment’.

In one petition she argued that the overseers' refusal 'to provide clothes or other necessaries’ for Anne had caused her to become lame. By 1700, the parish owed Alice for three years of care, leaving her 'very poor’.

The justices repeatedly ordered the overseers to pay their debts but they repeatedly failed to do so. How the battle ended we do not know.

More authority than biological mothers

Rhodes, who has just completed a PhD on petitioning by mothers in England and Wales from 1660–1720, found that foster mothers had significant advantages over biological mothers when dealing with the authorities.

“When birth mothers petitioned they had to prove, in a grovelling and pitiful tone, that they were among the deserving poor,” Rhodes said.

“They had to describe the impact of being a widow, of having a disabled husband or having a very sick child. But for foster mothers, it was enough to say ‘I'm supposed to be paid for this and you’re not fulfilling your part of the deal’.”