Financial support for fostering and SGO witheld?

darkwarrior

This might be outside of scope but wondering if someone can give me some advice with this.

In 2018, my two nephews and niece, all at the time under 10 years old, had to come live with us (nana and uncle) urgently after being taken away from their parents. The social at the time recommended not going with grandparent fostering as it would involve a lot of social interference in the children's lives although it's been nothing but constant social involvement since.

In 2020, this was changed to an SGO, but we still had to ask the social for permission to get things like dental surgery done so it doesn't seem like we have full parental responsibility

We have done what the council have told us basically, and I feel like we've been misled and misinformed. At no point have we received any kind of financial support. We have repeatedly asked the succession of social workers and they say they'll look at it and we never heard about it again and we kind of just accepted we weren't getting anything.

However, after looking into it more closely, it seems if we would have been receiving a foster allowance as a kinship fosterer which is equivalent to £375-£450 per week per child which is obviously a substantial amount when we are covering personal expenses, school uniforms, clothing for activities, food, energy, bus fare to school, time off to deal with incidents at school etc. And even as a special guardian we should be receiving an allowance based on the Fostering Allowance. And before the SGO in place we should have been receiving funding as well? We've never received anything. We get DLA for the eldest as he is autistic and the child benefit thing which is about £20 a week I think? They're currently trying to sign us off and I'm worried about helping the children going forward as well as not having been able to treat them as much as I would've liked in the past.

Am I understanding this correctly? Does anyone have any experience or advice with where we can go with this because it all feels a little helpless and while the kids would be here regardless of money, I mean they've been here 5 years so far, that kind of financial support would be a godsend and it would mean we might have money left over to actually look after ourselves again.

Thanks for reading, if you need more clear info let me know.

marcia_

https://childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/special-guardianship/

"Under the Adoption and Children Act 2002, financial support and other services may be available for the Special Guardian, the child and the parent(s). However, if a child is not (or was not) looked after by a Local Authority, then there is no automatic entitlement to an assessment for Special Guardianship Support services. It is possible to request an assessment for support in this situation."

 Have the children been in the care of the council? 

darkwarrior

Until the SGO was in place and even since the SGO was in place they've been involved in their care and we don't seem to hold full parental responsibility.

marcia_

As the social workers have ignored your requests I would request a financial assessment via the council's complaints procedure, which you should find on their website. 

tacpot12

As per marcia_'s advice. Mank a formal complaint, and request the financial assessment. I think I would claim that you have the automatic right for an assessment under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and let the council tell you why this is not the case.

According to this link you should be able to agree to dental surgery youself (assuming that it is not for a cosmetic purpose). Become a special guardian: What is a special guardian - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

You don't have full parental responsibility. Your parental rights are constrained, but only as set out in the law. Don't expect Social Services to know the law. You might want to get legal advice, and if you have home insurance and legal expenses insurance as part of this, you may be able to get the advice for free.