Fostering before adoption

[helpidontknowwhatimdoing]

Hello,

I wonder if anyone can help. My husband and I are likely to have our baby placed with us in the next few months. My question is- when a child is living with you but not yet legally adopted (so being fostered by us) is there any entitlement to payments?

To be clear we are not normally foster parents but have been told by our local authority that until the child is legally adopted we would be foster parents.

We live in Scotland, I will be on paid adoption leave from work but my husband is not currently working. Also are payments means tested and if so can someone explain that to me please?

We are trying to figure out our finances before a child comes to live with us.

Any information about paid nursery placements etc would also be much appreciated.

Thank you

Hi @helpidontknowwhatimdoing

You need @jellycatspyjamas our resident Scotland expert

You would be entitled to child benefit from when the child comes to live with you but this can take a while to sort out. You say ‘baby’ so I assume they are not yet two. If they are care experienced in Scotland they will be eligible for 1140 hours of funding from the age of two (as opposed to 3 for most children). There is no funding prior to this. The child may come with an adoption allowance but this is rare, particularly for babies. It would be paid by the local authority the child comes from so is worth asking about. If you are adopting you are not really a foster carer and you don’t get paid as such, despite still having many of the same responsibilities.

That's really helpful thank you.

Yes we are expecting an under 1. I hadn't realised about the nursery so that's great news

Not all nurseries offer it so have a look at the local authority website and that should tell you where they consider a partner for the funding - there should be a mixture of Council nurseries, Private settings and Childminders to look at, depending on what suits your little one and you. Check your local authority for the process to apply for this. You may need to pay top up - my wee one is two and gets three out of the four days paid for at his private nursery.

I don't know about Scotland, but in England our agency was clear that LAs pay foster allowance as when you are fostering you are working for them i.e. the LA has joint custody with the parents and provides foster care because the birth parents can't care for their child. As I understand it the amount does vary from LA to LA though.

We were in a similar position to you as my husband got made redundant at the end of the initial unpaid leave he took from work and I was on statutory adoption pay and leave. Our social worker pushed hard and we got foster allowance for an incredible 14 months - the last 2 months were post adoption and were granted to tide us over until we could both start working again.

All this said I know we were lucky - the authority is tiny and had the budget to do this. And our SW was incredible and tenacious to get this additional support in place.

I hope your SW and the LA can support you and take any additional pressure off your situation.

You wouldn’t normally be entitled to a fostering allowance because you’re fostering pending adoption. There are quite clear eligibility criteria for adoption allowance in Scotland eg adopting siblings, out of area placement with an expectation of contact with birth family or a child considered difficult to place - in these cases the placing authority must give consideration to providing an allowance. Some local authorities will make a discretionary allowance where there’s an unexpected change in financial circumstances between matching and placement to protect the placement, these are sometimes means tested and reviewed annually. What is say is ask, any payment would come from the local authority your child is located in, not your own local authority (unless they’re the same authority), I’ve found that out of authority placements are more likely to pay an allowance than when you’re adopting from your own local authority.

Assuming you explored finances before approval I’d expect your social worker to explore what has changed that you’re now needing financial support for adoption leave, because this should have been raised at the time if there were concerns.

Again depending on the local authority the child is with you might be offered (or could request) a settling in allowance that helps with bedroom furniture, car seats etc - you’d need to produce receipts but it can really help with the initial costs. Depending on the legal status of the child you might also get help with legal costs, eg if the child is on a POA they may help with costs for the adoption hearing.

It’s tricky because obviously all financial help is very welcome at such an expensive time, but there’s also the expectation that you’re fully able to support your new child so there’s a bit of a dance around it all. We went into adoption fully expecting to cover all the costs, and in the end got quite a bit of financial support but it literally wasn’t spoken about til after matching. Once the match is approved, have a chat with your own social worker in a “we want to explore all supports” kind of way, they’ll take the request back to the child’s local authority which will be easier than you going directly.

I was in the same situation but had to provide bank statements to prove I had adequate savings to cover costs of taking a year off of work. Did your worker not ask for this?
In terms of benefits, you won't qualify for any kind of foster carer allowance but you'll receive child benefit. If your husband is out of work then you should look into universal credit. Even if you are only entitled to a small amount that should qualify you to also receive the Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Grants.
Here are a couple of useful links:

https://www.entitledto.co.uk/benefits-calculator/Intro/Home?cid=ff53c234-f4e6-43cc-8f9f-0a8162162857

https://www.mygov.scot/scottish-child-payment