Our foster parents are recognised as part of our professional team and paid a generous fostering allowance that reflects their specialist skills, knowledge and experience.
Foster parent payments vary depending on the agency or local authority you choose. Our foster parents can receive up to £31,810 fostering allowance per year for each child – £34,547 if based in London – completely tax-free.
In addition, they also receive a variety of benefits, such as a holiday and summer activity allowance, school holiday and clothing payments, and access to our exclusive rewards platform, where they can find hundreds of incredible discounts on family experiences and stores across the UK.
Find out how much you could receive fostering with ISP.
Download information pack
If you're interested in fostering, then download our information pack to discover everything you need to know about becoming a foster parent with ISP.
The weekly fostering payment is broken down into two key elements:
Ongoing personal development is important to our foster parents and so we designed a payment structure that rewards continuous professional growth. Find out more about each of our payment tiers below.
You'll start your fostering career with ISP on our core payment tier until you've completed 12 months of fostering and all core training, or you’ve transferred as an experienced foster parent from another agency or local authority.
You'll receive £523.96 per week, per child.
If you live in London, you'll receive £567.91 per week, per child.
Once you've completed 12 months of fostering and all core training, you’ll be rewarded with a higher professional allowance on our main payment tier.
You'll receive £586.67 per week, per child.
If you live in London, you'll receive £636.72 per week, per child.
We also offer the chance to progress further to our senior payment tier through the completion of further training, including an NVQ3 or QCF Level 3 Health and Social Care. This can be discussed with your supervising social worker.
You'll receive £611.73 per week, per child.
If you live in London, you'll receive £664.37 per week, per child.
Parent and Child
When caring for a parent and child, you'll receive the following:
£450 Holiday allowance per child
Holidays are a normal part of family life and provide so many great memories to a child in care, as well as helping them to feel valued and important. We encourage our foster parents to take children away for a minimum of 5 nights and provide a £450 allowance to help cover the costs.
£150 Summer activity allowance per family
This allowance helps to cover the cost of fun activities over the summer to help a child’s personal development and general well-being; whether that’s a trip to the zoo, a family day at the beach or an afternoon at a local rock-climbing centre.
Uniform and clothing allowance
Attending school is crucial for educational development, so our foster parents receive a £250 uniform allowance to pay for a new school uniform when a child starts mainstream secondary school.
Additionally, they may qualify for a clothing allowance of up to £300 upon welcoming a child into their family.
With ISP, you'll also be entitled to a mileage allowance for transporting the child in your care, covering distances exceeding 800 miles each month.
We provide our foster families with 22 nights of respite per year.
We also offer various additional payments to promote enjoyable fostering experiences for all…
Generally, independent fostering agencies offer higher fostering allowances than local authorities. This is often because the children placed with local authority foster parents are younger or have less complex needs than those placed with an independent fostering agency.
Local authorities have minimum weekly allowance guidelines for foster parents, which depend on where you live and the age of the children you care for. These minimum allowances range from £132 - £231 per week, compared to independent fostering agencies which generally pay between £350 - £450 per week. We pay between £524 - £664 per week.
As a therapeutic fostering agency, our foster parents are specially trained to care for children and young people who have faced lots of upheaval and trauma, and as such, are regarded as fellow practitioners and rewarded with a generous allowance that recognises their professionalism.
Foster parents receive an annual tax allowance worth £18,140 on their income from fostering, plus an additional weekly relief for each child in their care – generally making most of their fostering income tax-free.
The weekly tax relief depends on the age of the child in care:
As a foster parent, you'll be classed as self-employed and will need to submit a tax return each year to HMRC.
Most foster parents won’t need to pay National Insurance as their profit from fostering is likely under the threshold. However, some may decide to continue paying Class 2 National Insurance so they’re entitled to various state benefits in future, such as retirement pension, employment support allowance (ESA) and job seeker’s allowance.
Income from fostering shouldn't affect means-tested benefits either as the fostering allowance isn’t counted towards income when working out the eligibility for benefits such as housing allowance, income support and more.
As well as providing a professional fee to the foster parent, the payment covers the cost of caring for a child, which includes food, clothing, utilities, transport, pocket money, outings, activities and more. The basic guidelines are:
Every child’s needs are unique and so local authorities may authorise additional expenses depending on their individual circumstances. For example, if a child doesn't attend school due to exclusion, additional expenses may be agreed upon for activities that promote learning.
There may also be excessive travel costs – for example if the child’s school and contact sessions are far from your home. These additional costs will be agreed upon with the local authority before the placement begins.
The fostering allowance provides a generous professional fee so that you can dedicate your time and energy to meeting the needs of the children and young people in your care, without needing to seek employment elsewhere.
However, we recognise this is not always financially viable and there may be circumstances where you may still need to work a part-time role (sometimes full-time). As part of the application process, we will learn more about your personal circumstances so we can understand whether you'd be able to meet the needs of a child in your care.
Some of the things we might explore include:
