Clothing allowance/amount

[FosterMum321]

Hi Guys we recently took placement of a 15 YO girl who is demanding a large amount of money for clothing allowance and having only fostered a short while we are getting no where fast. My SSW says there is no set amount and I can set what I see fit however the LAC's SW has forwarded me the guidelines on what is to be spent which apparently is £44/week she also added "to remember to deduct the cost of uniform etc" can anyone shed light on what "etc" is and how much 'clothing allowance' they give/month please. thanks you : )

Oh, I see you have started a thread. Ha ha, ignore my comment on the previous one!

To be honest, I don’t really know. I have two boys and even though they’re heading towards their teenage years they’ve always been happy for me to buy all their clothes and haven’t worried about fashion at all. So I’ve never had to work out a clothing allowance.

In your situation I probably would work it out. So if their allowance is, say £500 a month I would work out roughly how much I spend on food for them. How much any extracurricular activities are. How much you give them for school lunches. How much for pocket money/going into town with a friend. Anything you might put in a savings account. Work out how much you have spent/might have to spend on uniform and divide by 12 to get the monthly cost. A bit extra probably for household stuff that they will be using too such as toilet rolls. Then whatever’s left they could have as clothing allowance. So for example:

Food: £150
School lunch: £80
Youth club: £10
Bank account: £20
Pocket money: £50
Uniform spread throughout the year: £25
Household fund: £10
Fund for other things you’re likely to buy over the year such as stationery, treats, days out: £20
=£365 so there would be £135 left from their £500 allowance in this scenario. Which seems like loads to me so I’d probably up the amount for the bank account (that they can’t access yet) or check you’re not spending more on them in other ways, and go for about £60 a month as clothing allowance. Maybe a bit more from time to time if they need to buy something specific that costs more such as a winter coat.

Id say £30 a week is a good amount depending on how much you get, if i went with LA i would do £20 a week as my LA only pay £100 a week which cut down would be

food: £40 a week to include lunches and snacks
Days out £20 a week
pocket money £20 a week
extra bills / travel £20
=£100 so its really not a lot thats why im going agency because i want to give extra pocket money and treat The child too more than i could with LA. So its all about working out your costs and then working out what you can afford, I would say no more than £40 a week though

My friend fosters as she is told to spend £20 a week on clothes. However, there are weeks when she doesn't spend anything and weeks when she buys expensive items such as uniform.

With regard to the previous post about spending what is left from your fostering allowance on your foster child ... People need to remember you've probably given up a job to foster, so some of the fostering income needs to go towards your mortgage and bills etc.