Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made a comparative assessment of financial support available to (a) kinship and (b) foster carers.

Statutory guidance issued to local authorities makes it clear that children and young people should receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare.

As local authorities know their carers best, they have the power to decide what financial support should be provided to carers and their children and any payments should be made in accordance with their model for assessing support needs. The government does not set a maximum or minimum allowance for local authorities to administer. However, the kinship care statutory guidance, published in October 2024. states that in its calculation of any ongoing special guardianship financial support, the local authority should have regard to the fostering allowance that would have been paid if the child was fostered.

Broadly speaking, no foster carer should be financially disadvantaged because of their fostering role. The government expects that all foster parents receive at least the weekly National Minimum Allowance (NMA), in addition to any agreed expenses to cover the full cost of caring for each child placed with them. More information is set out in the National Minimum Standards (NMS) Standard 28, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7abe16e5274a319e77a6a1/NMS_Fostering_Services.pdf.

The department has raised the NMA for foster carers above inflation for two consecutive years. In 2024/25, we increased the NMA by 6.88%, following an increase of 12.43% in 2023/24. The new allowance amounts for 2024/25 can be found at https://www.gov.uk/support-for-foster-parents/help-with-the-cost-of-fostering.

Fostering service providers can choose to pay above the minimum allowance or pay additional fees. However, there is no requirement to pay fees beyond the minimum allowance.

The government is committed to supporting children in care through kinship and foster care.

At the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced £40 million to trial a new kinship allowance in up to 10 local authorities. We will test whether paying an allowance to cover certain costs, like supporting a child to settle into a new home with relatives, can help increase the number of children taken in by family members and friends.

The department is also investing £15 million to boost the number of foster carers next year, to generate hundreds of new foster placements and offer children a stable environment to grow up in. This will help recruit more foster parents by ensuring that every local authority has access to a regional recruitment hub. These hubs help raise awareness about fostering and offer prospective carers a centralised platform to find information, ask questions and get support from the start of their fostering journey.