Foster carers offered £50k to extend their homes

Foster parents could soon be given funding to build an extension to their homes to enable them to care for more children.

Bath and North East Somerset Council will offer carers grants of up to £50k for alterations to their homes, such as new bedrooms.

It plans to spend half a million pounds on the scheme, but the investment is forecast to pay for itself in just a month and a half.

Cllr Mark Elliot said the scheme aims to help keep siblings together and keep experienced foster carers fostering, and would follow "strict eligibility criteria".

Elliott explained that foster placements cost the council £510 a week, while a residential care placement costs an average of £8,000 a week.

"There are children in residential care who could be in foster care according to their care plans, but for whom we simply don't have the places," he said.

"And we have foster carers who say they would be willing to offer more places, but who don't have the space to do so.

"This scheme will enable those foster carers to finance extensions and alterations to their homes to enable them to care for more children.

"That is better for the children, and it's better for the council."

Only in-house carers will be eligible; they must be owners of the property, quotes from three different council-approved contractors will be required, and the council will take a legal charge over the property for five years.

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