Hi there, First of, any help or advice would be very much appreciated. my sister ended up getting into around £1300 worth of debt with orange due to her teenage daughter running up a very large phone bill in one month. My sister, I assume - has just ignore it all. I only found out yesterday due to her asking to lend money to resolve this. She received a county court claimform on the 27th September and a letter from Lowell's to state court proceedings would be the next option on the 2nd of October (after the claimform had already been submitted). Had I have known earlier I would have sent a CCA or SAR I think it is for her but now obviously things are a little more tricky. I told her to hold off doing anything until I had done some research (prior to this she offered them half but they refused). she totally ignored me because she's a royal pain and sent off the court letter saying she intends to only contest part of the claim. I imagine a few will be slapping their foreheads over this haha. what would you advise to do? She is also a new foster carer and has been informed if a CCJ does register against her she could lose her place as a fosterer. So obviously want to avoid the CCJ at all costs Thanks for reading!

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question but I can't find any other suitable for this issue. I'm looking for some advice regarding the data protection act and a bit of a long story but I will try to be as brief as possible. I am a foster carer of a 15 year old boy (B) who has autism, ADHD, and social emotional behavioural problems. I have been his foster carer for over 3 years and it has not been easy, he has temper tantrums like a 2 year old, has trashed my house on several occasions and trashed his room on a regular basis. He has been placed with me on a permanent basis. There has been a lady ® involved via social services who has been brought in to give specialist interventions for some particular problems he has and she has visited regularly with B's social worker. Myself and my adult son and girlfriend who live with us have been very open and honest with her about the difficulties hoping that he will get the help he needs to resolve some of his issues. I have another child in placement who will be leaving soon to return home and there has been suggestions that B, because of his difficulties then becomes a lone placement and that they will pay me for 2 placements so that i don't need another placement and can manage financially. In October the social worker and R visited and while they were here looked at his bedroom. I will admit that the bedroom was awful, he won't keep it clean and tidy and won't let me do it, he has damaged the walls, broken things and collects junk etc. When the social worker suggested to him that she would come round to help him sort it out he totally lost his rag over it, and with me too when I suggested helping him to get it sorted and said no-one is touching his room and if I do anything to his room he will trash mine! He has since been making a bit of an effort to get it tidied up and sorted out a bit under the threat of someone else doing it for him. A couple of weeks ago my supervisor told me the social worker and R were coming round to discuss how we can help B sort his room out. When they arrived R immediately said she had been asked to do a placement report and had brought it to share (absolutely nothing to do with what I thought they were coming for). I was totally shocked and unprepared for this and I had around 45 interrupted minutes (kids coming home from school) to go through a report containing at least 30 pages and tell her all the bits I disagreed with. The report was full of inaccuracies, assumptions, comments taken out of context and inferences. It was very derogatory regarding my family and home and made me out to be a dotty old lady who only cares about the garden, cats and chickens. I am actually a very intelligent, knowledgeable, and experienced carer. Yes my home is a bit tatty and everything is old but it's clean (apart from his bedroom) and it wasn't nearly so tatty before B came and trashed everything, broke furniture etc. I was very aggrieved that I was unprepared and did not have time to go through the report properly and point out all the inaccuracies and unjustified comments, She even got my son's age wrong and his university degree. She said of my garden that the veggies were all in straight rows with no weeds! Well she obviously hadn't looked because my veggies are not in rows and there are plenty of weeds. It said nothing about how B has settled, progressed and developed since coming here and how his temper tantrums have reduced significantly and how he will now talk about things upsetting him rather than throwing things. I felt like giving notice on B there and then but I won't do that to him, as this is the first place he has settled since coming into care - he went through about 6 placements in 2 years due to his behaviour - prior to coming here. Following this meeting I emailed R and told her I was not happy with the report and the fact that I did not have enough time to read it properly and challenge everything that was inaccurate or that I didn't agree with. I also said I was grossly insulted by the fact that she came into my home under the guise of providing specialist interventions for B and then used the information given freely for that purpose to write a report which was derogatory towards my home and family. I asked to revisit the report with her so I could have time to read it properly and give a considered response. That was over two weeks ago and I haven't had a response from her. The social worker, who I copied in did tell me her manager was going to call me but this hasn't happened either. If anyone can advise me I would like to know if I have a case under the Data Protection Act, due to the inaccuracy of the information and also the fact that it was gathered for a different purpose to which it has been put and what I should do about it. This information they now have could be very damaging to my good reputation as a very competent foster carer and could affect me getting other placements in the future. I have looked at the ICO website but it's quite complicated and there seem to be different rules regarding social services. It's also difficult to be very specific about what is wrong with the report as I do not have a copy and am relying on memory and I do not know what has happened since the meeting, whether anything has been corrected (the things I did manage to challenge). Sorry this is a bit long but if anyone has time to ready it I would be grateful for any advice.

can anyone offer any help or advice? In mid February this year there was an assault carried out by my daughter's 15 yr old neighbour on his 16 yr old sister. The 15 yr old was arrested. Police called an out-of-hours social worker to deal with the 16 yr old girl as the girls' parents were/are uninterested.The social worker asked my daughter, who is no relation whatsoever to any of those involved and has an 8 yr old son, if the 16 yr old could stay with her that night and would she bring her into Lambeth Social Services the next morning? My daughter, as a concerned neighbour, agreed. The following morning my daughter took the 16 yr old girl in to see social services and was asked by them if she would offer shelter for the girl for "a few days more". Eight weeks on, dozens of 'phone calls and several visits to Lambeth Soc Svcs and the situation hasn't changed although my daughter has fallen behind with her rent and other bills and I, on DLA myself, am having to subsidise things and to top everything, my daughter has been threatened with "action" for owing rent to Lambeth Council AND of being in breach of her tenancy agreement by having the 16 yr old girl live there! Lambeth Social Services say the do not have to offer any financial help to my daughter who is after all, a very unwilling, unpaid "foster care provider" who has now been prescribed anti-depressants by her GP because of all this and she can't just dump the girl on the streets.

I am a foster carer and when I began fostering over 3 years ago I took out a new home buildings and contents insurance policy with Nationwide. I specifically told the guy who sold it to me over the phone that I was a foster carer and needed suitable insurance to cover me for potential damage by foster children. He said this policy would be fine. I have been paying it for nearly 4 years and not made any claims but yesterday one of the young people that I foster caused considerable damage to my house during an outburst of temper, including a broken window and internal doors. I called the insurance company today and was told I was not covered because there is an general exclusion concerning damage caused by anyone living in the house. This means that I have been paying for nearly 4 years for a policy which was not what I asked for. Do I have any claim against the Nationwide for selling me a policy which did not meet my clearly stated needs?

I'm looking for information regarding repayment of benefits. My mother has been the primary carer of my nephew for the past 6 years, as he was placed with her through social services due to mental illness. This meant she was entitled to certain benefits; (child benefit, child tax credit, foster carers allowance and working family tax credits) or so she was told at the time. She has been receiving these payments no problem what so ever and recently was granted special guardianship. This meant that the case had recently been reviewed, and as a result, has now been informed that she was not entitled to most of these payments and will have to pay them back. She has always declared everything on her tax forms and has never been informed that she was not entitled to these, and when she questioned the various agencies involved as to why they didn't pick up on this before, has been told that "they never checked until now". I was wondering if there was any law or previous case to say that as she never defrauded them or misrepresented any information, that she should not be required to pay the money back. The money was claimed in good faith and went a long way in covering the cost of bringing up my nephew. On a rough calculation, it looks like it will be around £20,000 mark if she is made to repay the money! If anyone knows of a similar case or has any other information it would be REALLY appreciated, thanks.

Hi, my partner and I have been taking care of a then 15 year old girl for 18 months. The council decided it was 'private fostering' which means that the parents agree and pay for the arrangement. There never was such an arrangement, since the girl had run away from home and her dad did not want anything to do with her anymore. We received some money from the council (£400) but they stopped the payments when they discovered we had claimed Child Tax Credits. Due to a mistake from our side, we were overpaid the Child Tax Credit and now have to pay back £2700! We would like to ask Social Services to pay this amount, since they stopped all payments when they heard that we were receiving this money. Does anyone have any experience with cases like this, are we in our right to claim it from the council? We have fought for a long time to get any sort of expense payment and never received it from them, although the child has now been placed in foster care which is costing Social Services £400 a week in foster payments to the 'official' foster parents. We have saved them over the 18 months 78weeks x £400 = £31200, so I believe that asking them for only £2700 is quite a good deal for them still! Or is anyone aware of lawyers who would be interested and willing to have a look into this?