pocket money, computers, phones etc

[Surburbia]

For those fostering pre-teens and teenagers I'd like to know how you manage money and gadget provision.

If a child comes to you at 16 and is planning to leave at 18, say, thus is only with you for 2 years, do you buy each 16 year old a computer and phone? Do you put them on a pay as you go contract?

How much allowance each week or month do you give them? Or do you encourage them to get a Saturday/holiday job?

Do you save some of their fostering allowance to give them as a lump sum for when they leave? Do you tell them you are doing this?

I'd love to hear some stories from foster carers on these practical issues. Do you receive training on this?

My fson is 14.
a bit different here because he’s been here 10 years.
school provided laptop from his pupil premium.
we bought iPad, iPhone and is on a monthly contract.
we are with an agency so we are required to put £10 a week into a savings account not to be touched until 18.
He also has his own savings account in which I put £10 per week pocket money. He also puts any money he gets for Xmas/ birthdays in this account.
He has another account for bus fares and bits and bobs( online games mostly)
Also school dinner account is £50 per month.
I try to most of the money I give into accounts to try and teach him how to budget.
not going very well at the moment but hoping it will sink in eventually!!

Well in terms of pocket money it is likely your agency/la will have policies on this. In terms of savings you will either be required to hold savings for them or the la will make a deduction at source from fostering allowance (this is loads better as it saves you from lots of admin). Any job that they might get will have to be agreed with agency/LA. Ok that's the easy bit ....

Phones and ipads/laptops etc. The source of many many problems.....It is therefore ESSENTIAL that you get a policy agreed on this with LA/IFA BEFORE you agree to take the children. Not verbally but agreed in writing by exchnage of emails. eg do you have the right to confiscate their phone or impose restricted times of use. You could be faced with a situation whereby the child says it is their phone (perhaps given by a parent) and yu have no right to take it or restrict their use (particularly if parent funds contract) or inspect what phone is being used for etc. Complete recipe for disaster. How do you restrict contact with undesirables for example or use throughout the night ?

In our case no technology is allowed upstairs at all. They have phones which we have bought and which remain our property. They are allowed use dependent on behaviour. This has been established via email to our ssw so there is no dispute. The LA have provided ipads and laptops and we have agreed similar terms. We have Qustodio installed on all devices which allows us to restrict use in terms of total time per day, permitted hours and types of site. If access is attempted to undesirable sites such as porn gambling etc then we are notified. These are exactly the same restrictions that we imposed on our children. Kids in care are even more vulnerable to cse etc. Others may disagree and have a more liberal approach but that is what we do and it is the only basis on which we will have children in our house.

Many thanks for your detailed reply. What will happen when your foster kids get older - say 17? Will you loosen these restrictions? I can't imagine a 16 or 17 year old being happy to not have their laptop in their room, not least because they will most probably be doing their schoolwork on it. Do you have a study for the kids atm where they use their laptops if not using them upstairs?
We are liberal with our own kids but then again they didn't have a phone till they were 16 but they had 24 hour access after that but self-regulated.
However with more vulnerable teens a less liberal attitude sounds safer. I do wonder how much conflict will arise in the future however if you try to check a 16 year old's phone or restrict its use. I would find that difficult even with my own teens.
Have you tried to restrict use based on behaviour yet and what was the outcome - and how old was the kid?

Many thanks for your reply. Good idea to have different accounts.
Do you restrict his phone/computer use? My own sons didn't have phones till 16 but did have laptops earlier because they did their schoolwork on it and had the laptops in their bedrooms. They didn't seem to use them all night and self-regulated to a large extent.
Difficult to assume that would be the case with a foster child (except if you had them from young as in your case) as you don't know what they have been doing up to that point. Once a kid has full access to phone/computer I would imagine it's very hard to take it away without major scenes.

I’ve just set a no electronics upstairs rule.
we have a room downstairs that’s for gaming/ homework, this is where everything is stored at night.
he did come down once and took his phone up but was warned that if he did it again it would be left in my room.
like you my birth children were self regulated with their stuff but I know if my fson woke up early hours he’d go on his games so he doesn’t get the opportunity.
Im not good with tech so I get my older children to install parent locks and I get them to check what he’s been on.
we also have find my iPhone on his phone so I know where he is.
Fortunately as he’s been here so long he is quite good with the rules we have. He doesn’t have contact with any birth family so we have no worries there.
we were initially told to open an isa for savings but we’re not able to as he had one of the government ones opened when he was born and mum had the details. A child savings account has been fine for us, we just keep hold of the yearly statements incase we are ever asked for them.

Ours had a laptop provided by SS during lockdown. We'd previously bought them tablets and Switches and now they've got Smartphones as well. They're 13 and 14. We have the rule that all electronics are left downstairs at bedtime, as otherwise the eldest will stay up playing Roblox until he can't stay awake any longer, and then is late for school the next day as he won't wake up easily. He has had all electronics confiscated for up to a month in the past for breaking that rule on multiple occasions.

We put money into a savings account that they don't know about that we'll give them access to when they move on/out. I think it works out at £10 a week. They also get £10 that goes into savings that they can access when they need to buy birthday/Christmas presents or something they've been saving for, as long as they ask first. They also get up to £16 a week to spend on what they like but that's linked to chores and behaviour. The eldest went through a patch of being late for school every day so now he loses £5 if that ever happens as that does encourage him to get out of the house on time. I think the LA rate is about £8 a week so they get more than they 'should.' They also get £2.50 a day budget for school dinners.

Mine have been with me 8 years so we possibly do things differently to if they'd only just come to me.

I have been on a course where we talked about this kind of thing and some foster carers were of the opinion you can never take the kids' money off them but I said if I knew they were spending it on cigarettes for example there is no way they'd be getting pocket money from me. I asked the social worker who was running the course what was the right action in that example and he was very vague and just talked about 'depends on individual cases.'

Thanks for this. How old is your f son? I would have thought at a certain age he would refuse to be tracked. My own sons would have freaked out if I tried to put a track on where they were but I haven't worried since trust is there.
I am getting a sense that the issue is often contact with birth family - I assume limits are put on this by social worker?

My fson is 14.
He’s very needy and likes to know where I am all the time so the find my iPhone tracking works both ways.
It’s only been around a year that he’s become a little more independent, travelling alone.
contact is usually set by the court. Ours was very frequent for the first few years then went to 6 weekly.
Hes been with us since he was 4, for the first 6 years or so contact was going well, then parents became unreliable so his Sw stopped it.
we have tried to get him to write or send email/ text through Sw but he’s not interested.

FD(12) has various gadgets that we control with family link so she can't use it at night. FC(12) who came for respite had her own phone that we gently checked was charging downstairs at night. We gave FD a handed down phone. If she loses it she will have to save for another or use another old one.

Thank you that was very helpful. I guess it all depends on the type of child you have. Interesting that so far all the responses have been quite strict. I wonder if this is following your usual way with your own kids or you've had to be stricter with your f.kids because they need more boundaries? I've been very liberal and easy with my kids on these issues (though more strict on others) so I need to think about how I'd be with foster kids.

I was different with birth kids but it just sort of happened. Also, they ended up watching stuff in their rooms to have their own space away from FD. I did used to insist on gadgets being downstairs overnight though in early teens, but that gradually stopped. I think I would have liked to keep it going until after GCSEs ideally. You can always relax rules, but it's difficult to impose new ones.

i have a large sibling group, oldest two are 15 and 14. We are lucky to have a large house so no need to go to bedroom to do schoolwork. We are looking after other people's children and I want to keep them safe (same rules applied to my own children). Letting them have access to a camera and the web in their private bedrooms just doesnt make sense to me from a safeguarding point of view. If you arent aware of the cse dangers that this imposes and what is actually going on in every town and every street then I would urge caution. These are vulnerable kids in our care and we need to take a defensive stance. In addition the problems of whatsapp messages throughout the night disturbing sleep etc are immense. There might be as many as 200 messages in a night on a class whatsapp group. Allowing some isolation from this is a positive mental health/wellbeing step in my opinion.

Absolutely right of course and well put. However, I am surprised your 14 and 15 year old are agreeing to these quite strict rules because I'm pretty sure all their friends at school will have a lot more access to their devices. Have they rebelled yet against these restrictions? And if so, how have you handled it?

When they are 16 will you allow them more access and access in their bedrooms? I would have thought at that age it's sufficient to explain the dangers to them. But of course I'm thinking of my own kids, not foster kids who may be more vulnerable.

Not least, I would think the issue of contact with their families is an issue with phone/computer use in their rooms (if they are not allowed contact). And how do you prevent this?

Good points - I guess one has to make a judgement.

not sure how they would rebel against this ? what would it look like ? If they were to take phone to bedroom we would just turn it off remotely. We have had no problem at all with compliance and many kids have same restrictions (despite what they might tell you). I am reminded of one of the girls saying to me recently but everyone vapes. Every single person at xxx school vapes so whats the problem ? Your best source of information about restrictions on peers is not from your child ! The restriction remains in place whilst they are in our house. It is backed up and reinforced by social workers. Bottom line is that its our condition and will remain in force until at least 18. Its just not a discussion.