How to give up smoking

Maggie Burton, 51, is a foster carer from Kent who has looked after 15 children since she began in 2003.

She and her husband, Ian, 49, are also smokers and think that the Fostering Network is wrong to try to prevent people like them from looking after younger children.

“I think it is fair enough to insist that foster carers don’t smoke around children. We smoke about 15 a day each and don’t smoke in the house any more. We smoke outside and I think that is right. But I don’t think it is entirely necessary to ban smokers from looking after young children altogether,” she told The Times.

The guidance will not affect her immediately, as she only fosters older children aged between 11 and 18. But the Fostering Network has said that in time all foster carers should be nonsmokers.

She is also unpersuaded by arguments that children are more likely to take up smoking if their foster carers smoke.

“I don’t think that argument has legs, and if they use it for smoking they can use it for anything. Because we foster older children, many of them already smoke when they arrive here. We talk to them about giving up, not so much about the health aspects because they get that from everywhere else, but about the cost of smoking and how much more difficult it is to give up when you are older.

“None of the children who didn’t smoke started while they were here, and in fact one quit after she arrived. With fostering it is about what you have to offer, not whether you smoke or not.”

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