FOSTER carers who missed out on years of council support have been paid more than £50,000 in fees and allowances for caring for their niece and nephew.

BCP Council has published an action plan after the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) found fault causing injustice and issued 11 recommendations.

This came to light after a complaint was made that the former Bournemouth Borough Council failed to consider three people as family foster carers.

As a result, the family missed out on appropriate financial and other support from the council.

Councillors will be asked at a meeting today, Tuesday, September 14, to acknowledge the ombudsman's findings and support the action plan, parts of which have already been commenced.

A report published ahead of the full council meeting said: "The ombudsman has issued a formal report against BCP Council following its investigation of a complaint by Ms X that the council failed to consider her and her partner, Ms Y, and her sister, Ms D, as family foster carers and therefore they had missed out on appropriate financial and other support from the Council when caring for their nephew and niece.

"The LGSCO upheld the complaint finding fault causing injustice and 11 recommendations to address this.

"The LGSCO has given the Council credit that it has agreed to its recommendations."

The action plan says the local authority has issued a payment of £51,740 to the family and apologised for its wrongdoing.

BCP Council has also been tasked with confirming how many other possible cases there could be where families have been disadvantaged by the same faults identified in this complaint.

As reported, the LGSCO said the council had inappropriately considered people caring for the children of relatives as doing so under a private arrangement.

It said council social workers were “actively involved” with the children and that their carers should be formally recognised as fosterers who would then be eligible for financial support.

Responding to the ombudsman’s report, the council’s corporate director for children’s services, Elaine Redding, said its judgements will be acted on.

“We accept the conclusions of the investigation undertaken by the ombudsman and had already undertaken many of the actions set out in the report,” she said.

“On behalf of BCP Council I offer an unreserved apology to the family in this case and we have written to them making clear we will be addressing the issues as outlined in the report.”