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I haven't done this recently, so anything I say may be out-of-date, or possibly badly remembered...but I thought I'd post a reply, perhaps there will be someone along later you has better information,

Anyway, I don't remember anything being transferred to us when it came to the child trust fund (is this what you are referring to?) I just got the name of the building society and then had a loooong time in the branch trying to find someone there who could change the details on the account for us. We took with us the relevant documentation (adoption certificate etc.) That took a while and several goes to make sure that the correspondence was changed to our address. I'm sure any other bank account would be the same.

Thanks. I am referring to the child ISA funds that the government gave to our son (since he was in care for over a year) + the weekly savings that the local authority saved for him according to their guidance. Not sure if anyone here has some recent experience in terms of how long it took once the adoption order was granted.

Hi,

i didn’t even know these existed until we received a letter from Child ISA asking us to fill in forms as adoption had gone through. Think it was a few months though after order. Don’t know about monthly savings I thought they just had £200 in. We haven’t heard back yet since we sent our forms off as only got round to doing it this week,

We did as bluelizard, just went to the building society and told them the situation. They were a bit panicky and embarrassed, but I stood my ground - and make sure you insist that no correspondence will be sent to the birth family. I was worried that they would send her confirmation of the change of details, address etc.

We did have the account details though, if you don't have these you should ask the LA as they might never get around to it.

I have never heard of this ISA fund. After a quick google it seems that the government pays in money for every child in care opening the account with £200. We adopted 4.5 years ago and our son was in care for over two years. If anyone has experience of trying to claim this money after such a long period let me know! I will look into it, thanks for posting.

Another thing you should look into are the weekly savings that most local authorities put aside for children in care which must be transferred to the adoptive parents once the adoption order is approved (in some cases local authorities ask foster parents to put a certain amount aside out of their allowances in a savings account for the child). In our case that was £5 per week and our children were in care for some years (which is a significant amount).

As an example see guidance to foster parents from our local authority which I found online:

‘From April 1st 2015 a savings scheme for children placed with [Local Authority X] foster carers who have been looked after for a continuous period of 12 months was introduced. A deduction of £5.00 per week will be taken at source from the maintenance allowance for all children. This figure will be reviewed on an annual basis. The savings will be made into each child’s Junior ISA account on a quarterly basis. This will become available to them when they reach 18. For children without a Junior ISA a savings account will be identified by the children’s social worker for the savings to be deposited on a quarterly basis.’

Hi, Please can you advise me where to start so I can track down my LOs ISA?

So, after several e-mails I managed to figure it out.

Each child that has been in care for longer than a year has an ISA Junior account where the government deposits £200.

In addition, some local authorities deduct an amount from the foster carers’ allowance and also deposit it in this ISA Junior account for the child - this was about £5 per week in our case (please note that some local authorities ask foster carers to save this money directly for the child in a separate savings account which must be passed on to the adoptive parents once the child has been placed with them).

The ISA Junior account is managed by the Share Foundation (https://sharefound.org). Upon the adoption order being approved, the local authority must inform the Share Foundation, who will send a letter/forms to the local authority to be shared with the adoptive parents and which enable responsibility for the account to be transferred to them. We were informed by our local authority that this should take about a month from the moment they have informed the Share Foundation. If you still haven’t received this letter/forms you should contact your local authority asking them to inform the Share Foundation so that they can send them.

Once responsibility for the account has been transferred to the adoptive parents, they can change ISA providers/banks if they wish to do so and can continue to deposit money in the account for the child. However, once funds have been deposited, these can only be released by the child once they complete 18 years of age, as ISA is a personal long-term investment fund similar to a pension fund.

In our case our kids have around £500 each in a ISA Junior account which is a significant amount.

I hope this is helpful.

Thank you so much John! That has saved me a lot of time. My son came with a few coins in a piggy bank - no bank account and certainly no mention of an ISA. I will be on the case.