Care and support

Benefits

For more general information select the link entitled families and benefits on the right hand side of the page.

You should tell your local jobcentre plus office that you are a foster carer if you are claiming benefits.

Child benefit

You can claim child benefit for your own children, or other children that live with you, but not foster children.

To claim contact the child benefit helpdesk on 0845 302 1444 (or 0845 302 1474 for textphone users) or go to: www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit.

Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

DLA is a benefit paid to children and adults under 65 who have care or mobility needs as a result of disability or ill-health.

A child in foster care can still get DLA. It is usually paid to an adult with whom the child lives if he or she is under 16.

If you foster a child who is getting DLA contact the disability benefit unit to make sure they know the child is living with you. They also need to know if you wish to act as the child’s Appointee. You may need to discuss this with the local authority or fostering agency.

If you think your foster child could get DLA, phone the Benefits Enquiry Line (see end of fact-sheet) for a claim form for a person aged under 16.

DLA is paid on top of any benefits, tax credits or other income you may have. It may increase the amounts of some means-tested benefits such as child tax credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit (but not if it is paid for a foster child).

For more information select the link entitled benefits for children with a disability on the right hand side of the page.

Carers allowance

You can get this if you care for someone who receives the middle rate of the care component of disability living allowance (or attendance allowance). This could be an adult, your own child, or a fostered child.

You must:

• care for them for 35 hours a week,
• not be a full-time student, and
• earn under £95.00 net a week (2008/9 amount – may increase in October 2008)

Your fostering allowance shouldn’t normally be taken as ‘earnings’ but see below for how ‘reward’ elements are treated.

For more information select the link entitled carer's allowance on the right hand side of the page.

You can get a carers allowance form from your nearest jobcentre plus office, or by phoning the carers allowance unit, or the Benefit Enquiry Line on 0800 882200 or you can claim on-line on www.dwp.gov.uk/carersallowance. See end of fact-sheet for details.

Means – tested benefits

The child you foster will not be counted as part of your household when any means-tested benefit for your family is calculated. Equally, fostering allowances are intended to cover the cost of maintaining a child, so they don’t count as income for means-tested benefits.

Because fostering is treated as work by HMRC, but not as work by the DWP, some foster carers can choose whether to claim income support or working tax credit. If you claim working tax credit (see below), it is likely that you will get the maximum amount if you have no other earned income. Alternatively, if you claim income support, you may get help with mortgage interest. Get specialist advice via your social worker if you think this choice might apply to you (e.g. if you are a single person or couple who are fostering and you have no other employment).

Income support and income-based jobseeker’s allowance, housing and council tax benefit

Fostering allowances do not count as income for any of these benefits.

The time you spend caring does not count as work for either income support or jobseeker’s allowance, although you will have to show that you are available for work if you want to claim jobseeker’s allowance.

If you are a single foster parent you will be able to claim income support, and not be expected to sign on. However, in the weeks when you don’t have a child placed with you, you may have to sign-on as unemployed unless you can claim income support for some other reason (as a lone parent for example).

Child tax credit and working tax credit

HMRC assess and administer child tax credit and working tax credit.

You can claim tax credits by contacting the HMRC tax credit helpline on 0845 300 3900 (0845 300 3909 for textphone users). www.hmrc.gov.uk has more information.

For tax credits purposes, your income from foster caring is your taxable profit. If you get the foster care exemption, your income from foster care will be nil. If you or your partner has any other taxable income, that income will be taken into account for tax credits.

You can claim child tax credit for your own children, but not for your foster children. It does not matter if you work in any other way, or not. You may get some child tax credit even if your household income is up to about £58,000 (or £66,000 if you have a baby under one).

You can claim working tax credit if you or your partner are ‘in qualifying paid work’ for

• at least 16 hours a week if you have a child of your own, or
• 30 hours a week if you do not

Some other working people who are over 50, or who have a disability can also claim if they work at least 16 hours.

Free school meals

Foster children can have free school meals if the foster carer is getting a qualifying benefit, such as income support or JSA. If the foster children ‘s ‘birth parents’ are the ones in receipt of the qualifying benefit, they can also help the child get free school meals.

Continuing care

If the young person is 16 or over and is a parent or disabled, they can claim income support whilst still looked-after, even if in education. Some young people continue to stay with their foster parents after they become 18 and ceased to be ‘looked-after’. They will be able to claim benefits in their own right, such as income support and jobseeker’s allowance (even if still in education in some circumstances) and may be able to claim housing benefit if you have made a commercial rent agreement with them.

However, the fostering tax relief as described above no longer applies once the young person leaves care at 18. You may be liable to pay tax on the ‘rent’ you receive from the young person, although there are some tax concessions for adult placement schemes and under the ‘rent a room’ scheme – see www.hmrc.gov.uk for more details. HMRC have said that the adult placement scheme rules on tax relief should apply to ex-fostering arrangements if the foster carer is still providing the same level of support and they are getting the same level of payment.

Some local authorities pay an "after-care allowance" to foster parents who keep young people past 18 years.

If these payments are made under the Children Act (for the support of care leavers) then they should be ignored for any means-tested benefits that you claim. However any rent that you receive from the young person that they get from housing benefit will count as your income for benefit purposes.

If the young person is studying or on income support, income based JSA or most training schemes, they will not normally affect any housing or council tax benefit that you have until they become 25.

For more information select the link entitled young people and benefits on the right hand side of the page.