Fostering allowances

[Fosterquestion]

My family have been asked to, well start the process, of fostering 4 family children because their Mum is struggling to cope and has been admitted into hospital. We of course want to help but we both work full time so one of us would have to be at home. My wife would ask to take temporary leave but it would be unpaid and as much as we want to help we have our own son14 to consider financially.

We have read that fosterers only get £148 but is that per child or a set amount and is it per week per week or per month and we simply couldn't pay the bills on that so although we want to help then we wouldn't be able to survive on that.

Could anyone give me an idea of what you might receive to foster 4 children, 2 of which have SEND. 2 of the children are over and 10 and 2 of them are under 5. They are sweet and kind children but we wouldn't want to offer to help to be unable to cope financially if this went on longer than we are thinking.

Thanks in advance.

@f0stercarer That’s easily said but when you’re a kinship carer you have no choice. You don’t get the option to move to an agency. It’s LA or nothing. And it has to be the LA the children are from so even moving house to an area that pays better allowances wouldn’t help. I happen to know that my LA pays slightly better than the LA I foster for but this isn’t an option open to kinship carers. They have you over a barrel and they know it. And as their is an emotional connection to these children carers put up with this as the alternative is the child going into mainstream care.

the financial aspect is hard.

but even harder is the emotional aspect and the amount of headspace kinship fostering requires.

it's not possible without flexible working and reduced hours. there will be social services appointments. therapy for the children. and of course the normal daily life stuff like school, laundry etc.

nothing nothing is automatic. you need to prepare to fight like a lioness for both yourselves, your own children and your fosterlings.

you also need to be strict with social services. learn to say no. learn to be fierce.
learn clear language. no could/might but can/cannot/absolutely not.

we had care of a nephew for a few months (mum in rehab after an accident, dad run ragged between work and caring for wife).
if was bloody hard and we regret taking it on. relationship with the dad never quite recovered.
in hindsight we should have commited to limited weekly time only.

i wasnt directing my criticism at kinship carers who, as you say, are powerless. Rather the general fostering population of these awful LAs who pay a pittance often when surrounded by neighbouring LAs who pay far more. At least there is now a specific Union for foster carers who are bringing low overdue representation to tackle these issues.

Madwife123
can you not claim dla for the child with autism?
Our fson has autism and we were told by his Sw to claim it for him. He gets over £300 per month.
I later heard off other carers that you can claim carers allowance if your earnings and working hours are less than the threshold set by the government.
Ive found most social workers tell you very little about anything to do with finances and even other carers don’t like to tell you if they get extras.

@Cassimin I agree no one tells you about finances! We only found out recently DLA is an option (not carers as I work) and so we put a claim in only to find out it was already being paid! Birth mum has been claiming it for the 2 years her children have been in care and never stopped the claim! We are in the process of switching it over but they have told the money they have paid to birth mum is not recoverable and so little one loses out on that now. Such a crap system that allows parents to steal from their children without consequence.

Hi
my husband and I have been longer term foster carers for the last 7 years for the same child.
whilst this child was on respite, following an incident with his Girlfriend who is much younger then him - we had unknown males come to our front door shouting that he was a “peado” and that he needed to get outside, despite the fact we told them that he wasn’t here this aggressive shouting behaviour continued in the street for several minutes - there was people walking passed the house and the only time they left was when we stated that we would call the police if they didn’t leave - during the encounter they told us in graphic details what our foster child had apparently been doing (sexually) -
we contacted the fostering agency and stated that we didn’t feel that he would be safe to return due to the above.
without notice, or without consideration to our welfare they moved him to another carer who is in a different town and stopped our payments.

my question is - if I wanted to end a placement I would have to give 28 days notice. As the agency ended placement should we of been given notice.

we have had very little communication from the agency and we both feel upset and disappointed that after 7 years of caring for a child that the placement has ended and we have been through such a difficult situation and he have been left to cope on our own, there people could of come back - and still could.

Also we still have most of the child’s belongings - which is adding to the upset we are feeling and stopping us from being able to move forward - we don’t have a definite date for when the belongings are being collected.

You need to post on yr own thread so people see it. Copy and paste? I'm really sorry, that's a tough situation.

Thank you - I don’t know how to delete this post?