Anyone who grew up with a brother or sister will know that living with a sibling can sometimes be a challenge, but the relationship can also be one of the most rewarding in life.

For this reason alone, splitting up siblings who require foster care should be the exception rather than the rule.

Sadly, it appears this sound principle of foster care is being routinely ignored and hundreds of Scottish children are being separated from their siblings when they are placed with a foster carer. Figures from the charity Action for Children show that last year, 302 children were separated from brothers or sisters, which represents more than one-third of all children placed in foster care.

In some extreme cases - when one sibling is abusing another, for example - there may be a case for fostering family members separately, but in the majority of cases siblings will benefit from having their brother and sister around, particularly when they are already facing losing contact with their mother or father.

The possible negative effects of a split from a sibling are also clear. As one teenager, Anna, who was split from her brothers, explains, children in such a situation can face a crisis of identity. "I feel like my life was wasted because I didn't know my family," says Anna. "I didn't know who I was."

So why are councils still placing siblings in separate foster homes? Notionally, councils do subscribe to the principle that siblings should be fostered together wherever possible, but it may not be happening in practice because it is easier and quicker to place them separately. For good reasons, some foster carers may feel able to cope with one child but be concerned about the responsibilities of taking on several.

Another likely factor is the shortage of foster carers. For some time, the shortage has meant that children regularly face being moved between different foster homes multiple times, but the shortfall in carers may also make it harder for councils to find a foster parent with the space needed to take on more than one child.

One way to tackle this shortage is to reach potential carers who may have wrongly ruled themselves out of contention. Single people, for example, often assume that they cannot foster. They can. The same applies to people in same-sex relationships and people over 55. Indeed, older carers are often ideal candidates: their own children may have moved out, meaning they have the space and time to devote to one or more children.

Potential carers should also be reminded that the barriers to becoming a foster parent are also not as high as they might think. The training is much quicker than it used to be, for example, meaning that a carer can be fostering within a few months. Carers are also given a much more realistic level of financial compensation than they used to be.

This message needs to reach more potential carers for the good of society as a whole, and the good of those children who are being split from their brothers and sisters. Most siblings benefit hugely by staying together; more must be done to ensure they do.