It is wrong what they are doing.
They are helping working familes if the child is in school and there are NO CHILDCARE costs.
This is clearly wrong and it is making the fund harder to access for many more working parents.

This is something we need to let people know about and try and gain more feedback from parents.

Hopefully family fund will also see your comments and reply to them here on an open forum.

I believe that this is something they need to review with immediate effect and be raised at there next meeting.

Will the family fund member of staff give an undertaking this is an issue you will raise at the next meeting?

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Our Irish members can also use our new website for Ireland which is

What annoys me Daniel (apart from the email address being posted on here to encourage enquiries; which is fairly irksome when I haven't had a reply in the 3 weeks since I sent it), is that I cannot work out exactly how they have come to the conclusion that a childcare element is income. Tax credit do not pay all of the childcare, they pay toward it and only for a registered childcare provider. I can understand that they have counted housing benefit and council tax benefit as income, because all families have to pay for their accomodation and council tax, regardless of where the money to pay for it comes from. Not all families have to pay childcare costs though, but most working families will. The childcare element is not part of the family's income. It is to pay someone else's income. Tax credit will only pay a childcare element where the childcare provider is registered, and only where both parents work (or the sole parent in the case of a lone parent family).

Working families which the Family fund have expressed, rather boldly, that they are aiming to avoid the penalisation of, are being penalised. It has been stated on this forum by a representative of the Family Fund:

Quote:We are already seeing that many working families on the lowest of incomes, who previously would not have been eligible, can now receive a grant from us.

I can only assume that this applies to families where one member or both members work part time, or whom have no (or very little) childcare costs. It cannot possibly extend to families who work full time unless they too, have no (or very low) childcare costs. A quick calculation will point that out rather easily.

What about the ones who could previously have received a grant, but now cannot solely because of the amount they are awarded in childcare costs which enable them to work? Not taking into account the childcare costs (and by the way this is part of WTC not CTC) my income is well below the threshold. The Threshold in Scotland is £27000 income per annum. ALL of my income, including CTC and WTC but excluding the childcare element of WTC is below £20000. That is more than 7 thousand below the threshold. My childcare element is what is pushing me (just) above the threshold. (Childcare in this area is very hard to come by and because of that very expensive, the average here is £4.00 per hour per child) I have no family to help out, no partner to rely on to work opposite hours to eradicate the need for paid childcare, so if I didn't have the childcare element to help pay toward childcare for my children I could not work.

There is no way of dressing it up - people are being penalised because they work. The childcare element is because they have childcare costs, they have childcare costs because they work. The childcare element is a part of Working Tax Credit, NOT Child Tax Credit. A person cannot secure childcare costs from tax credit unless they work and have a registered childcare provider.