SGO alllowances

[maricharle]

Hi everyone,
I need information can you help please.

I want to know if anyone with an SGO is receiving the national minimum fostering allowance. Has anyone ever been told they will have either child benefit/child tax credit or both deducted by the local authority from the NMA it pays prior to payment.


It seems maddness to me for the Local authority in my case to have assessed the allowance at 100% only to dedcut an amount equal to 43.75% (child benefit/child tax credit) from it before I receive my payment.

Please let me know your local authority's position and if possible name of authority re the above.

Best Wishes to All. Maricharle

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hi Maricharle ,

When you are a foster carer (FC) and receiving foster care allowance (FCA), you are not allowed to claim state benefits – child benefit, child tax credit. FCA is therefore generally higher to allow for the fact you can’t claim benefits.

When you have a SGO, you are allowed to claim state benefits. Therefore Local Authorities (LA) usually reduces SGO allowances to account for this. However, when you add together the SGO allowance and state benefits, you should receive the same amount as you would if you were receiving still FCA.

The leading case on this is B v London Borough of Lewisham, which is referred to at page 29 of our SGO advice sheet. If you like a copy of the whole judgment from that case get back in touch and I will provide you with a link.

Best wishes

Suzie

[LLB]

Our SGO Allowance is based on the recommended minimum fostering allowance. I got this in writing before the court order.

The Child Benefit which I did not get under fostering I expected to be deducted because otherwise I would have got it twice. We were fortunate in that they started to deduct Child Benefit backdated only after I had confirmed that I had started to receive it. The only disadvantage with this was that it took some weeks to sort out Child Benefit which meant that they took this backdated amount all in one payment at that point.

Child Tax Credit is classed as part of income for the annual assessment in our authority but we are pensioners so it makes no difference to the SGO allowance because our income is so low.

[Jo6153]

We were receiving the fostering allowance up till the SGO was granted then it reduced to the SGO allowance but when we finally receive the family allowance and child tax credit it works out as the same amount less birthday and christmas payments but we only put the claims in last week when we got the SGO and we were told by the family allowance that it can take up to 10 weeks for a claim to be sorted hope this helps


Jo