What does your foster carer payment cover?
Fostering is hard work and challenging, it is very important that your payment for fostering reflects your efforts and the needs of the child or young person placed with you. Evolve, with its local office in Croydon, has rewarding and competitive fostering carer payments. These are reviewed annually and updated by the Evolve team from input from its carers locally in Croydon.
Your carer payment is split into two key elements as outlined below:
Fostering allowances
These are the allowances to cover the fostering costs directly on behalf of the child or young person’s care or support. These include but are not limited to:
- Supporting activities and hobbies
- Education support costs such as books or laptop access
- Additional costs in the fostering home such as heat and light
- Birthday or religious celebrations
- Holiday costs or day trips
- Clothing for the child or young – day-to-day and school uniform
- Food costs
- Pocket money
- Transport costs for school, college or for activities
- Toiletries and personal care
- Contribution toward a mobile phone (when the young person is the right age)
- Savings for a child or young person (this is often deducted from the foster carer payment beforehand)
These are summary costs and there can be other specific fostering costs depending on the child’s needs or support. For example, if they have special education needs, there may be specific education materials needed.
The location is a factor also. This would be the location of fostering young person’s school from the foster carer’s home in Croydon. If this is local in Croydon, then travel and school transport costs would be lower but if outside Croydon, then they would be higher. The general guideline is to provide transport for each child or young person in fostering of up to 200 miles per week. With being located in London, transport could be on public transport also for foster carers and fostering children.
Reward element
This is the element that the foster carer effectively has to keep for their efforts and hard work. The total foster carer payment less the fostering allowances, then gives the reward element. The fostering reward element is important to understand and recognise.
Evolve has a competitive fostering reward element to ensure it supports its foster carers in Croydon and all areas well.
There is a shortage of foster carers locally in Croydon, so please do contact us to Request a Call Back about fostering and becoming a foster carer. If you are already an approved foster carer, we can support your fostering transfer and cover how you can transfer fostering agencies.