Family Budgets and Public Money: Spending Fostering Payments

In this second of two papers based on a study of payment issues within foster care, the focus is on expenditure. It is argued that the hybrid public/private nature of fostering gives rise to contradictory pressures for carers, including the status of maintenance payments as both part of family budgets and a form of delegated public expenditure. For example, carers are required in principle both to spend fixed amounts upon foster children and to treat them in like fashion to their own children. In this paper, the issue of ‘like treatment’ is explored, along with the significance of payment for ‘children who foster’ and for relationships between carers and foster children. Also examined are the challenges presented by differences between carers’ material circumstances and those of birth families, especially when reunification is planned. Overall, the paper seeks to show how the handling of expenditure becomes closely entwined with inter-personal dynamics within foster care.