Can I really afford to foster a child?

When it comes to fostering, some people might be a little hesitant because they are concerned about how they’ll afford to look after the needs of a foster child.

In fact, many of the questions we receive from prospective foster parents are about finances and whether fostering is an affordable option for them.

The good news is, fostering is a progressive career that not only pays a generous allowance but rewards you with a professional fee and discounts to make caring for your child that little bit easier. Let’s look at how fostering could be a brilliant career choice for you, and how our allowances, rewards, and other benefits work.

Is fostering a career?

Yes! Fostering is a career. It’s an incredibly rewarding and challenging profession that comes with everything you would expect in a career – career progression, training, a competitive allowance, and a wide range of other rewards and benefits for both you and your family.

One of the best things about fostering as a career, aside from helping a vulnerable child, is the ability to work flexibly from home. Fostering allows you to get out of the nine-to-five grind and create a more sustainable work/life balance, while doing an incredibly selfless job.

As with any professional career, you will also receive a wealth of training and development and have the opportunity to network with other foster carers and work alongside a team of fostering professionals, including social workers and education specialists.

And when you make the amazing decision to become a foster carer, you can bring with you the transferable skills you have developed through other jobs. Skills such as teamwork, administration, communication, empathy, management, perseverance, flexibility, stability, adaptability, and commitment.

Does fostering pay well?

Our foster carers do incredible, life-changing work, and we believe they should be paid a competitive allowance to reflect this.

While the main reason anyone should foster is the passion to help children in care, we can’t ignore the fact that finances play a role. This is, after all, an incredibly important role to take on, and you deserve to be paid for all the hard work you put into caring for your young person.

Working in local communities, without the need to spend money supporting different offices in other locations, we’re able to offer our foster parents better financial allowances. You’ll start to receive your allowance from the first payment date once you’ve welcomed your foster child into your home.

While the amount fostering pays varies (we’ll look at this in a bit more detail a little later), our weekly foster care allowance is between £418 and £804, per week, per child, with the standard payment in England being £465.15. We pay our parents every fortnight via a BACS payment direct into your bank account, and you’ll know in advance when your payment is being made.

You will also be able to submit an expense claim for any expenses you incur that aren’t covered by your fee - your dedicated social worker will be able to advise you about these. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to claim means-tested benefits, as your fostering allowance isn’t classed as income in the same way as income is as an employee.

Can I work and foster?

We can’t ignore the ongoing rise in the cost of living, and we understand that many families might need to consider additional income, especially single people who want to foster. This is why in 2022 alone, we gave our foster parents two cost-of-living rises and another in April 2023. This means our foster carers have received a 9% uplift in a 12-month period.

You might not realise it, but fostering and working is a lot more common than you might think. In fact, almost 40% of foster parents in the UK work another job alongside fostering, so if you’re thinking of doing both, you’re not alone.

And while fostering is a career in itself, if you need to, you can also continue to work in your current role while fostering. This is a big benefit if you’re not ready to give up your profession, or your personal circumstances require you to need additional income.

When you foster a child, the needs of your foster child are the number one priority, but if you aren’t ready to leave your current job, or you’re concerned about your income if you leave your role, give us a call and we can have a chat about how it might be possible for you to do both.