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Children and family services Maladministration causing injustice
24 January 2008
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council acted unfairly over additional payments to different categories of foster carers. The Ombudsman says that the Council “unreasonably discriminated” in that it did not make the same additional payments to foster carers who were related to the children they fostered as it did to other foster carers. The Council has accepted the Ombudsman’s recommendations for resolving the complaint, and agreed to pay £2,872.39 to the complainant and review its kinship care policy. ‘Mr Carter’ (not his real name for legal reasons) and his wife looked after a relative’s child between May 2005 and November 2006. This made them ‘kinship carers’ (relatives or friends who care for another family’s children) under the Council’s policy. Kinship carers may have children placed with them by the Council for longer term care before the necessary checks are carried out and they are approved as foster carers. Foster carers are entitled to weekly payments for each child fostered and can claim additional payments for birthdays, Christmas etc. The Council makes weekly payments to kinship carers at the same rate as other foster carers, but it did not make the additional payments to kinship carers. The Council then changed its policy to make these payments claimable from 1 April 2007. The Council refused to make back payment of the additional payments to Mr Carter. The Ombudsman found that the Council was at fault in that it unreasonably discriminated between categories of foster carer in the matter of additional payments. The Council was also at fault in not making back payments of the difference between the support payment made to Mr Carter and the payments it made to foster carers, once it had placed the child with Mr and Mrs Carter and started the process for assessing them as kinship carers. The Ombudsman finds maladministration causing injustice and, in accordance with his recommendations,, the Council has paid Mr Carter £2,872.39 and is reviewing its kinship care policy.
Date Updated: 27/10/08
are in .pdf format. To view these files you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. It can be downloaded below free of charge. Click To Download