Free school meals for children in care

[scarlettsmummy2]

Hi, just a quick question- are children in foster care eligible for free school meals? My foster son has been getting them for the last two years but we have just been told this is stopping unless we have an income of less than 16k. We get paid less than that as carers however also have our own income too. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Foster payments are disregarded when it comes to benefits etc, so why can't your child get free school meals and clothing grants like others do. Having a foster child is a 24 hour round the clock support to care for someone who might stay for a week, a month or even a year. This may involve during the night, etc, working at around £3 an hour. This lady or any other foster carer doesn't do it for money as it is paid so little. It seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and giving her a hard time. Yes every child does deserve a free school meal but foster carers aren't paid a fortune. Give her some slack, until you walk a mile in her shoes.

No Foster Carer has PR for a foster child.

The allowance paid for the foster child includes the cost of school meals.

I can’t believe people on here are so uppity about getting free school meals. Oh no shock horror, perish the thought, they might be tarred and damaged by the very thought. Nobody knows your child gets free school meals apart from you. Once you’ve lived in one of the deprived areas, come talk to the mothers here and see it from their point of view. There isn’t a stigma attached to this. In Scotland kids whose parents are on certain benefits would be entitled to free school meals and a clothing allowance in Scotland, regardless of whether they are fostered or not. According to The Fostering Network, there may be rules in place on this from different agencies on whether they wish you to claim or not. My local authority put it through automatically, as wee one got it last year. My wee one goes through shoes every few months and has issues with eating food, either hides it or puts it in bin, a little extra towards these eventualities comes in handy. I was under the impression this forum was for help, there seems to be a bit of a divide between upper class and lower class in regards to comments on whether people should or should not claim. 9k might be a lot to some, but not much to another. We don’t know this person’s full circumstances.

As long as all the children in the family are getting free school meals there isn't an issue. It becomes an issue when OP pays for her own children to have school dinners, yet makes an application for her Foster child to recieve free school meals, despite her already receiving an allowance from the council to pay for Foster child's school dinners - exactly the same as all Foster carers. Can you not see what's wrong with that? 🤔

I might be wrong but isn’t it the case now that if a child is on fsm (and OP you said they were until recently) that no matter what happens to parents they are to remain on fsm until they go to secondary school (if currently primary age), or they leave school altogether (if in high school).
Something to do with universal credits rollout.
Even if parents got a £100k a year job the children keep their fsm.
I’d look into it further OP, but your right, LA want you to drop your main income to be there for FC but don’t want to pay you for it.
Allowance is just to cover FC related costs. Not your costs, or your house costs, or your other children’s costs which you still have to cover.
I’m with LA and they don’t even cover basic FC costs to any decent standard of living. Certainly not holidays, or eating out , or costly hobbies- that all comes from me, so they’ve fat chance of me giving up my job !

Hello my 3 foster children were having free school meals before they came to me and the school told me its easier to start and apply for free school meals than stop them. I tried by contacting the council ect but was told there computer refused to cancel them. I feel guilty accepting the free meals as I get paid from thd local authority.

i have 4 sisters. 2 at one school 2 at another. 1 sister at each school gets free school meals. I also have received food vouchers for two of them. I filled out forms saying all were ineligible for fsm yet they still came through. The school explanation was that for two of them their previous schools had set them up for fsm and this could not then be cnaged for 3 years. I just made sure I had an email on record to the schools saying clearly that I had not claimed for fsm.