The government has launched a �2m campaign to recruit an extra 7,000 foster parents in England.

The recruitment drive is a joint enterprise with the National Foster Care Association, which says there's a damaging shortage of foster carers.

Demand has never been greater, because as children's homes have closed more and more children in care have been placed with foster parents.

Of about 54,000 children who are looked after in England, more than two thirds are in foster homes.

Chronic shortage

The shortage means that children are often placed with families of a different ethnic background, and brothers and sisters can be split up.

Because these first placements are sometimes unsuitable, children are moved from one foster carer to another, which can be very destabilising.

There is a particular need for people from ethnic minority backgrounds and those able to care for disabled children.

The aim is to create a bigger pool of potential foster parents to provide the widest possible choice.

More than half of the children in local authority care return to their families within three months but a small proportion are in care for two years or more.

They often come from very difficult backgrounds and may have behavioural problems.

Wednesday's recruitment drive launch casts the net as wide as possible in the search for people willing to support these children.

It is aimed not just at couples with children of their own, but at single and childless people too.