3.13.8 Financial Policy Leaving Care Service

Date of Commencement
Purpose
Policy Statement
Application
Definitions
Procedures
Authority and Other Information

Appendix A - Consultation and Participation Input to Policy Development

Appendix B - Income Matrix

Appendix C - List of Payments Expected to be Covered as Essentials by the Local Authority

Appendix D - Setting up Home Allowance Matrix (in process)

Appendix E - Leaflet for Young People (in process)

1. Date of Commencement

This policy comes into effect for young people who are Eligible, Relevant or Former Relevant and living independently from the 1st of September 2009.

2. Purpose

Under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 the local authority has a duty to support young people financially and under the Every Child Matters agenda the local authority is required to support young people to 'Achieve Economic Well-Being'.

The outcome this policy is to achieve is a clear, consistent and coherent policy which ensures fair access to financial support which links economic activity to financial context in a logical relationship to enable young people to make informed choices about their education, employment and training status, opportunities and lifestyle in order to achieve long-term economic well-being.

The objective of the policy is to produce a matrix of economic activity bands relating to specific minimum income levels which sit alongside a set of costs the local authority will pay as corporate parents to facilitate young people in understanding the concept of income, out-going and disposable income in order to support them to budget appropriately and make informed choices about their spending and economic activity.

The purpose of this policy document is to establish the principles for implementing the financial policy by the Looked After and Leaving Care team.

3. Policy Statement

Service user participation is a key element of all Oxfordshire's Leaving Care policies and this policy has been developed in partnership with Oxfordshire's Source Worker group, a group of Care Leavers tasked with representing the views of Oxfordshire's Looked After young people and those leaving care.

As Corporate Parents for young people Looked After and Leaving Care we want to ensure that the young people we support are provided with the basic necessities that all good parents would want to ensure their children have, providing these essentials within an affordable budget.

Alongside this, we want to support our young people to gain financial independence making informed choices about their lifelong economic well-being while recognising the effort, commitment and achievement of young people in terms of their learning and work activity.

Oxfordshire will link different levels of economic activity to fixed minimum disposable income levels with these levels increasing with increasing levels of activity. In order to maintain parity with peers, Oxfordshire has set these levels in line with established national benefits and incentives.

The top up to minimum income can either be given to the young person on a regular agreed basis to save or spend on identified extras or upgrades, or saved by the leaving care PA to be spent at a later date on an agreed activity or item(s). As the young person gets older, the PA will support them to learn to save their money for themselves.

In this way, it is hoped that young people will be able to connect their economic activity with their income and lifestyle, make informed choices about these, can decide to 'upgrade' their essentials as they choose within their budget, can extend the range of things they are able to spend their money on, will be supported and encouraged to continue to learn, work and progress, and will learn to budget effectively including saving.

Decision-making is made at ground level on a daily basis according to the policy via the Pathway Plan and subject to the monitoring and quality assurance procedures in place for this service. In addition, quarterly monitoring of the overall spending will be undertaken to identify inconsistency in implementation as well as unforeseen circumstances which can then be brought back to the young people and personal advisor groups for problem-solving.

4. Application

This policy applies to all Looked After young people and Care Leavers who are Eligible, Relevant or Former Relevant and living independently. All Leaving Care personal advisors and Looked After social workers working with young people in the categories above will need to implement the policy.

This policy will have implications for financial policies regarding young people in foster care and residential placements and therefore for their carers and key workers as well as for the Family Placement teams supporting them.

This policy does not apply to those young people engaged in Higher Education as these young people fall under the Higher Education Policy.

5. Definitions

Eligibility Criteria

An Eligible young person is one who is Looked After and is aged 16 or 17.

A Relevant young person is one who has ceased to be Looked After and is aged 17 or 17.

A Former Relevant young person is one who was Eligible or Relevant and is aged between 18 and 21. This can include young people over the age of 21 up to the age of 24 where the young person is engaged in a programme of full-time learning agreed with the Leaving Care service.

Living independently refers to those living in a situation other than at home with parents, in foster care or in a residential placement.

Economic activity

Economic activity is classed as any employment activity including legal paid work, volunteering and work experience or any accredited learning programme. Both part-time and full-time activities are included.

Programmes of learning and work based training are classified as part-time or full-time according the provider offering the programme.

For employment activities, part-time is classified as under 16 hours per week and full-time as 16 hours per week or more in line with Job-Seekers Allowance.

Income

Minimum income level is calculated as full income minus rent or council tax paid by the young person.

Full income is calculated after all relevant funding sources have been applied to.

6. Procedures

Delivery

Leaving Care PAs will support young people to understand the policy, to apply the policy to their own situation and to use the policy to inform their choices and decision-making around current and future EET options and planning.

Where a shortfall in the minimum income level is identified with the young person according to their current economic activity and their full income after rent and council tax paid by the young person, the Leaving Care PA will set up a financial arrangement to top-up the income to the relevant fixed level.

Income levels, monitoring procedures and calculation guidance are contained within the income matrix in Appendix B and are fixed according to activity banding.

Monitoring and quality assurance

Leaving Care PAs are responsible for decision-making against the policy via the Pathway Plan which is subject to quality assurance by the Team Manager.

Senior practitioners are responsible for assessing decision-making against the policy via supervision and authorisation of finance forms.

Implementation of the policy will be monitored on a quarterly basis by the EET Co-ordinator via the financial spreadsheet identifying:

areas of inconsistent application
unforeseen/exceptional circumstances

Where the above is identified this is to be brought back to the following leaving care team meeting and source worker meeting for problem-solving and amendment of the policy where necessary.

A formal review of the policy will be undertaken at ten months after commencement: July 2010.

The Directorate Leadership Team for Children, Young People and Families will monitor spending against the proposal annually.

The Children's Trust will monitor the impact of the policy on outcomes annually.

Consent

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 it is the right of all our young people over statutory school age to withhold consent to share information.

As relates to this policy, it is the young person's right to:

not share pay information with the leaving care service;
withhold consent for the leaving care service to inform colleges of further education and training providers of their care leaver status;
withhold consent for job centre plus and housing benefit to share their information with the leaving care service.

Where this is the decision of the young person this will be respected.

Where the leaving care service is unable to verify the financial situation of a young person the policy will not apply.

7. Authority and Other Information

This policy was produced by Raise and The Leaving Care Team, Oxfordshire County Council in partnership with The Source Workers on the 15th of July 2009 in line with the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the Every Child Matters agenda.

For further information please contact Eleanor Stone
Education, Employment and Training Co-ordinator
07799 478410 or eleanor.stone@oxfordshire. gov.uk

Appendix A - Consultation and Participation Input to Policy Development

What the source workers said on 25th Nov 2008:

Incentives to work or learn
Earn the money to be able to spend freely
Financial incentive to make work worthwhile financially
Either a bit of financial support each week or save it up and give it as a lump
Travel passes for social as well as EET
Offer incentive - give 'bonuses' at the end of something in money or goods
Incentives: special books/clothes/driving licence/driving lessons/driving test
Also requested by the source workers, being looked at but not included directly within this proposal:
Fund-raising scheme which rewards individual enterprise e.g. young people fund raise and can spend the money they raise on themselves
Laptop hire

And on 12th May 2009:

"If you do nothing, you get nothing!"
Expect bills contribution
Extra for those in EET - but need to demonstrate they're sticking at it - incremental increases as progress
More clothing allowance
Holiday and EET breaks
Ensuring young people continue to be challenged in terms of progression, particularly NEET into EET.

What the Centrepoint consultation with young homeless said:

...young people want to be significantly better off through working. They want to have a minimum of £40 more per week, after they have paid their rent, than they have when claiming state benefits.

What leaving care PAs said:

Young people and workers need clarity around general entitlement to financial incentives and how entitlement is worked out.
We want to support young people to have high aspirations balanced with realistic financial expectations around financial issues ensuring our young people are able to sustain and progress their long-term economic well-being once they have left our service.

What Raise said:

We need to support young people to understand how their economic activity directly affects their income and to be able to make informed choices about their EET path and lifestyle.

Appendix B - Income Matrix

EET activity band.	Qualifying information.	Minimum disposable income per week.	Conditions of payment.	Monitoring and payment timeframes.
Custody	For all eligible and relevant.	£20 (per month)	Paid by postal order.	Paid monthly. Monitored quarterly.
NEET	Not engaging.	£50.95	Part food vouchers plus clothes shopping on seasonal basis spent with worker.	Paid weekly. Monitored fortnightly. No roll-over of payments.
NEET	Engaging.	£50.95	Full cash if wanted, clothes money flexible over the year and spent without staff unless wanted.	Paid weekly unless agreed otherwise in Pathway Plan. No roll-over payments if not agreed in pathway plan. Monitored fortnightly. Travel paid either on a reimbursement basis or up-front if necessary with receipts.
Part-time learning, work or volunteering.	Under 16 hours per week.	£66		Paid as agreed via pathway plan. Monitored monthly. (Average over 1 month if paid weekly.) Paid in arrears.
Full-time learning, work or volunteering (or part-time plus part-time).	16 hours or more per week (15 if education).	£80.95	For full-time learning EMA bonus equivalent will be administered according to provider's own criteria - max £100 in January and again in June.	Paid weekly if FE via EMA monitoring under mainstream EMA criteria for the provider. Paid quarterly if work as average over 3 months. Paid in arrears. Rent and council tax contribution shared by housing benefit with young person consent.
Full-time activity plus part-time activity.		£90		As above.

Appendix C - List of Payments Expected to be Covered as Essentials by the Local Authority

18th birthday: £20.
21st birthday: £25.
Clothing: £200 per year given out depending on EET circumstances.
Additional £50 per year for special shapes and sizes.
Birth certificate.
Suitcase/rucksack: £30.
One recognised religious festival per year: £20.
Maternity grant (£100 per year one-off).
Interview/work/college clothes.
Haircut for interview.
Equipment for work as a one-off.
Equipment/trips/uniform for college after all other funding applied for - if the student leaves the course before the beginning of the second term they are expected to repay 25% of the costs up to a max of £50. In addition, if student applies for a second course requiring equipment they are expected to contribute towards this cost.
Stationery for the start of an education course: £20.
School/college/work bag: £15.
Additional EET related activity e.g. ball dependent on attendance (max one per year/course).
£20 placement transition payment.
Passport: renewal only and only where passport due to expire is still in the young person's possession. Or where the young person has already left CLA without a passport and is travelling immanently. Photos not included.
Travel documents only where the young person is travelling immanently.
Provisional driving licence:
1. For ID purposes: if no passport then driving licence. Photos not included.
2. For driving purposes: only if the young person can demonstrate they can afford lesions.
First driving practical test (check with instructor that ready).
First driving theory test (check with instructor that ready).
Travel for appointments/ interviews on a reimbursement basis or one-off up-front if absolutely necessary. If up front, needs to have attended.
Travel for family/network contact on a reimbursement basis or up-front if necessary - needs to be having the contact with emphasis on local network where possible.
Bus pass for parents (one parent only) while engaging with child related services.
Travel for those in part-time learning, volunteering or work (earning under £150 per week) on the days they need to attend.
Travel for those in full-time learning, volunteering or full-time work (earning less than £150 per week) can be either:
1. a bus pass (tied into attendance and not over the Summer holiday for those in full-time learning) or;
2. a bicycle package including a bike, a helmet, lights and padlock. This would be supplemented by a bus pass in January and February.
Full-time work bridging grant of £50 per week for a maximum of 4 weeks while waiting for first salary payment.
Leisure: up to a maximum of £50 per month - to be monitored for consistency and equality.

Note: Under this policy there are no lunch money, laundry money or bill payments as these are covered by the incentive payments linked to EET activity in the income matrix (see Appendix B - Income Matrix).

End