MORE children have been given the chance of a caring home after a major recruitment drive signed up 41new foster parents.

Last year 549 children were in care in Oxfordshire but just 384 were in foster placements.

Thanks to more people signing up the number of children in foster placements has increased but more are still needed as the total number of children in care has also gone up.

It follows a push by Oxfordshire County Council to get more people to sign up as foster carers, including the launch of a foster friendly covenant that helped employers to make it easier for their staff to foster children.

The local authority said it had also created 49 new 'connected person' foster arrangements where a friend or relative of a family with a child requiring foster care have volunteered to care for them.

County council service manager Teresa Rogers said those who had signed up could change a child's life.

She said: "We're very pleased to have welcomed more than 40 new foster carers to the service.

"As always we need to encourage more people to consider whether or not they could change a child's life by fostering.

"Being a foster carer is a challenging role but there are huge rewards in being able to make a difference to a young person's life.

"By further increasing our pool of in-house foster carers we can provide greater choice of placement for vulnerable children within the county and enable more of our children to stay closer to home."

As well as new foster carers being recruited, 24 who were already signed up decided to take on more responsibilities in the past financial year such as fostering for more days.

Marc Church from Yarnton was one of those who signed up in the past year having been convinced by the campaign and his experiences of foster care.

His mother Debbie has been a foster carer for 25 years and his sister Laura for seven so when he left his job as a property manager, becoming a full-time foster carer seemed the obvious choice.

The 30-year-old said: "I have never seen a negative aspect of fostering.

"Of course the children can be challenging, as any child can be, but I found it positive growing up with it.

"Becoming a foster carer had always been at the back of my mind.

"I worked as a teaching assistant earlier in my career and it was when I stopped doing that I found that working with children was when I was most satisfied.

"Being a foster carer is rewarding, it is nice to be doing something good and see the children progressing and helping out where you can.

"I would advise anybody to go for it."

Mr Church, who lives with his girlfriend Holly Turner, applied in November and was accepted earlier this year.

The pair have since fostered one child for a two-week respite placement and are expecting a longer placement shortly.

Mr Church said: "I would 100 per cent encourage people if they have got the space or are thinking about it to definitely do it.

"There is lots of support and information and it is a really good thing to do."