By fostering with us, you’ll help a Leeds child stay close to their school, friends, and community.
In return, we offer emotional, practical, and financial support, plus ongoing training to help you grow your skills.
As Leeds City Council’s official fostering service, we’re not-for-profit and focused on giving our carers a positive experience. Our friendly, experienced team has supported hundreds of foster families, and our OFSTED feedback speaks for itself.
We welcome people from all backgrounds and have a strong community of over 700 carers, but we urgently need more loving homes for children and young people in Leeds.
We offer all our foster carers continuous training so that you never stop developing and will be fully equipped to support our foster children through whatever life throws at them.
You’ll be given lots of opportunities to attend courses, both in person and online, tailored to fit in with childcare commitments, better your skills and gain formal qualifications. We’ll even pay your travel and parking expenses.
For each child you foster, you will receive the following weekly allowance to meet the day to day expenses of caring for a child:
| Child age | Weekly allowance |
| 0-4 yrs | £180.34 |
| 5-10 yrs | £200.17 |
| 11-15 yrs | £242.96 |
| 16yrs+ | £295.57 |
In addition, you may also receive a weekly fee based on our ‘payments for skills’ model. This is based on your previous childcare/work experience and time commitment to fostering.
General entry requirements: A spare bedroom and a desire to care for children and young people.
Financial support: Weekly allowance only.
Commitment required: Primary carer can work up to full-time hours but must make appropriate childcare arrangements.
General entry requirements: A spare bedroom and some experience of childcare e.g. parenting / looking after other’s children / paid or voluntary work in childcare.
Financial support: Weekly allowance plus weekly fee of £141.38 per child.
Commitment required: Primary carer can work up to full-time hours but must make appropriate childcare arrangements.
General entry requirements: A spare bedroom, level two experience, plus the ability to take more challenging children with more complex needs.
Financial support: Weekly allowance plus weekly fee of £200.28 per child.
Commitment required: Primary carer can work but must make appropriate childcare arrangements.
General entry requirements: A spare bedroom, and significant formal childcare experience, plus the ability to take more challenging children with complex needs. You also need the ability to reflect upon professional experience and relate this to the fostering task. E.g. three years fostering experience of children with complex needs. Employment in childcare or related experience such as nursing, youth work or teaching.
Financial support: Weekly allowance plus weekly fee of £259.18 per child.
Commitment required: Primary carer can work but will need to be able to meet all fostering requirements.
Most foster carers do not pay tax on their fostering income due to the Qualifying Care Relief scheme.
Foster carers are self-employed and have to submit a tax return at the end of the financial year. An end of year income statement is provided by the council. This can be done through the online Self Assessment tax return at no cost.
Foster carers qualify for Class 2 National Insurance Contributions. This provides access to state maternity benefits, a state retirement pension and state bereavement benefits.
Foster carers can apply for Class 3 National Insurance Credits at the end of the tax year. This counts towards state retirement pension only.
Foster Carers may qualify for Universal Credit (dependant on income).
Our teams provide local support groups for foster carers, including:
We also offer these other benefits:
We welcome applications from any ethnic background, religion and sexuality, and it doesn't matter whether you are employed, unemployed, married, single or divorced. The most important thing is that you have a spare bedroom and time to give to a child.
