Can any body give me their views on this situation?
17 year old who was formerly looked after by LA but has lived on own in rented place for some time with support from SS. Now has become lone parent, she has a week old baby and has returned to being under a full care order and placed with her baby in a foster family. The family receive Fostering Allowances for her and the baby. Normally a looked after 17 yr old can't get IS until 18yrs, but can she get IS because she is in an exempt group ie a lone parent?

Reg 16(3) of the CB regs prevents the foster family to claim CB. Reg 14 of the IS regs does not count a looked after child by SS as a member of the family. It seems then (though I have not be able to find a provision actually saying this!!) your client, as you say, comes within the exceptions and should be able to claim IS as a lone parent in her own right.

Also that the fostering allowance if it has been done under ss23(2) of the Children Act, will be ignored for the family doing the fostering ( see e.g sch 9 of the IS regs - para 25), so I think the allowance would not affect your client either. Note that I am doing a bit of knitting here rather than contributing with a coherent answer. Sorry.

I agree with Essie.

My understanding is that your client can claim child benefit and income support but not child tax credit. It is not that anywhere says that she can claim, apart from exemption to care leavers restrictions, but that nowhere says she can't.

I have dealt with similar cases and IS/CB has been paid.

Child tax credit not payable due to Reg 3(1) Rule 4, Case A of the Child Tax Credit Regs.

Tony

The original posting says that the foster carers get fostering allowances for the 17 year old and the baby. Surely if the baby is being "looked after" by the LA he/she is not the responsibility of the 17 year old, hence she cannot claim CB, CTC or IS as a lone parent.

Hello Brian

I am not aware of anything that says that because a child is looked after s/he cannot be anyone else's responsibility for child benefit purposes. It could only be if some law other than social security law made this the case.

For child benefit purposes, responsibility for a child is defined by Section 143 of SSCBA.

143(1) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person shall be treated as responsible for a child .... in any week if-
(a) he has the child living with him in that week;

As we know more than one person can be responsible for a child for CB purposes.

Reg 15 of the Income Support (General) Regs defines responsibility for IS purposes - e.g. receiving child benefit or living with person.

I know this seems counter intuitive but I have had clients paid in these circumstances.

Tony

Thanks Tony. I was thinking of CB Reg 16(3) but of course this only prevents the foster care getting CB for the baby, not the 17 year old. This must be the exception to the rule that if something looks to good to be true it probably isn't. As a matter of interest, would/could the LA reduce the fostering allowances by the amount of benefit and Tax Credit the 17yo would get to avoid double provision?

Brian

Thanks for all your responses and confirming that it's not a straight forward topic, it may be an area which we could write a briefing paper on in the future, unless anybody knows of one already written?

Brian - I don't remember there being any consideration of reducing payments in cases I have been involved with and I wouldn't want to encourage it. It seems to me a good thing that the mother has some independent income to encourage her understanding of financial responsibility for herself and her child and I doubt the foster carer would be very pleased if their payments were reduced because the mother and baby rec'd money directly. The arrangement might breakdown at this point.

I tried to check with the social worker who dealt with the most recent case but she is not available at the moment. If I found out that this was considered I'll let you know.

Heather - I think it would be a good idea if there was something available on the relationship between local authority payments and benefits, including looked after children. I found it rather confusing when I started working in this area and there was nowhere to go to find out such information easily. CPAG handbook covers some of it but it often doesn't answer the question you have at the time, except implicitly.

Tony