As its UK Charity Week, we thought it would be a good opportunity to share TACT’s pride in its charity status.
As a charitable organisation, we are 100% not-for-profit. Unlike some independent fostering agencies, we have no owners and have no requirement to pay out dividends or bonuses. Every penny of our surplus income is reinvested into supporting our foster families and young people and has done so for more than 25 years.
As with other UK charities, we are governed by our board of trustees, an unpaid group of volunteers who oversee our systems of financial control, promote high ethical standards and monitor regulatory compliance. We cannot ‘sell’ our foster carers as commercial IFA’s regularly do and we never offer bribes to foster carers to switch to us.
Because we are under no obligation to make a profit, we are able to charge extremely fair fees to local authorities during the matching process between children and foster carers. It was noted in the 2018 Fostering Stocktake that we consistently charge the lowest fees to local authorities. This is particularly important at a time where local authorities are already under strain and feeling the effects of austerity.
As a charity, we also provide a voice for children in care and campaign for issues that matter to children and young people in care and on the fringes of care. Find out more about our policy and campaigning work here.
TACT is a member of the the Fairer Fostering Partnership which is a group of charitable and not-for-profit fostering agencies across the UK that advocate for children in respect of regulation as well as representing its membership at central government.
We believe that the care of vulnerable children and young people should not be a way in which investors can profit. Commercial fostering agencies make millions of pounds profit from fostering, all of which could be reinvested into making a huge difference to the young people they care for.
