res allowance

[kathryn e]

hi, my 2 neices and nephew are living with me under a ro and have been since jan 11, both parents are in prison. I was not even aware that a res allowance was available until i read it on here, the children were in care in the north east and as we live in the north west we are now under a different authority as the ss who "looked after" them just wondering if anyone had any advice on applying for res allowance, ss have no involvement with the children now, infact the ss in northwest have never been near. the children were placed in care as an emergency when parents were convicted but were also on the at risk register, once we were given residence they were removed from the at risk and that was the last contact we had with ss,
I have read loads of stuff on here that has been of benefit to me and am sure i will be posting in the future as the parents are released.

k.e.williams

[Kate]

Hi kathryn, welcome to the forum [:)] If the children were in care, were they actually placed with you by the SS? Or did you take on looking after them as a private arrangement? SS are experts at trying to weasel out of their responsibilities and love to shunt kinship carers off down the residence order road then wash their hands of them.

It would probably be helpful to call the free FRG helpline. It's open Mon-Fri 10 am to 3.30 pm on 0808 801 0366.

[kathryn e]

hi thanks for the reply, the children were in foster care prior to them living with us, ss approached us to see if we would take the children, they remained in care for 3 months while checks etc.. were done.

k.e.williams

[Kate]

kathryn, it sounds as if this was not a private arrangement, ss placed the children with you and they should have made some provision for you. Shame on them - but sadly that's the experience of many of us as kinship carers. I would call the helpline to see what they advise. Good luck.

[kathryn e]

i spoke to the helpline they were very helpful, i will now look into any way we can try and get any assistance but i wont be holding out too much hope. they have also suggested that i should have perhaps looked at a sgo so am going to get myself some decent legal advice and see where i go with this.I feel as if we were just given the basic info and we were even told we didnt need any legal advice as noone was going to oppose us getting the ro so we didnt bother, still its never too late to learn as they say.

k.e.williams

[Kate]

Glad you rang the helpline, and are going to get decent legal advice. No it's definitely never too late to learn. We went for an RO, pushed by SS. Having been on this forum a while by then I can't say we were unaware of what that meant, ie that SS would leave us to get on with it. But we just wanted to get on with our lives and not be under pressure with SS meetings and visits.

It is very hard to get money out of the LA once you have the RO, but not impossible: we don't get any Residence Allowance but we did get a fairly substantial amount of money as part of g/d's nursery fees, as a result of going through a Stage 2 complaint. It sounds to me as if you may have grounds to complain that this was not a private arrangement, and if so you're in a stronger position to argue for some sort of allowance, to be backdated.

Good luck with going for an SGO. We should do the same - g/d has been with us over 5 years now and I always intended to do it eventually but there never seems to be a time that we feel like going through it all!

[David Roth]

Unfortunately, it sounds as if the local authority didn't provide you with the information that you needed in order to make an informed choice. You were only presented with one option, a residence order without support, and because you had no reason to do otherwise you took the local authority on trust.

Under the statutory guidance for local authorities on family and friends care, which came into force on 1st April this year, they would have been obliged to have a kinship policy which was accessible to you and provided you with the necessary information to make an informed choice about the appropriate route for you. Unfortunately, this guidance probably came in too late for you, but it does show what the government's intentions are.

If you do complain, you could point out that the local authority has not acted in accordance with what the government clearly intends to be good practice in this area - it is in para. 4.13 of the statutory guidance: https://www.education.gov.uk/publicatio ... 20Care.pdf

You might also want to point out this deficiency to your local MP and complain down that route as well.

David R
FRG Policy Adviser