§ Mr. Georgeasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether she will publish the range of payments—namely, the various amounts—made by local authorities to foster parents.
§ Dr. OwenI regret that information about the full range of payments made by local authorities to foster parents is not collected centrally. Local authorities determine their own scales of boarding-out allowances in the light of local and individual circumstances and scales may vary between one local authority and another but as I explained in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport North (Mr. Bennett) on 24th February, my Department proposes to discuss with the local authority associations the basis of calculating these allowances.
My hon. Friend will have seen from paragraph 127 of Volume 1 of the Eleventh Report from the Expenditure Committee into the working of the 506W Children and Young Persons Act 1969 that boarding-out rates may be as high as £40 a week in special circumstances.—[Vol. 906, c. 176.]