• Registered Charity in England and Wales No. 1192653
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Charging Families Policy

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Purpose

This policy sets out The Belay Foundation’s approach to charging beneficiaries for some of our services. It aims to ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability in our charging decisions, and confirm our ongoing commitment to ensuring accessibility for all families who may benefit from our support. The policy applies to all services provided directly to adoptive, kinship and special guardianship families.

Guiding principles

Our approach to charging is guided by the following principles:

  • Mission-led: All decisions about charging are made in alignment with our charitable purpose.
  • Equity of access: We will take steps to ensure that those who are unable to pay for our services are still able to benefit from our expertise.
  • Transparency: Our beneficiaries and partners will be supported to understand how charges are set, what they cover, and how to seek financial support to cover the costs of our services if needed.
  • Sustainability: Charging for some services enables us to sustain and develop high-quality trauma-responsive practical support for families within our beneficiary community.
  • Advocacy: We recognise that the state retains responsibility for post-adoption support and we will continue to advocate for, and build partnerships to secure over time, publicly-funded access to our services.

Legal and Regulatory Framework

We consider that our policy is consistent with the Charity Commission’s guidance on charging for services, and our obligation to demonstrate public benefit, as it ensures that those who cannot afford to pay are not unreasonably excluded from our services through:

  • Provision of freely accessible and no-cost information via our website and advice webinars, which are deemed to be more than “minimal or token provision for the poor” as stated in the Charity Commission’s guidance
  • Ensuring that the majority of our services are available at a cost that someone of modest means will find readily affordable; and that there are reductions in cost available to those who may not be able to afford them.
  • Committing to establishing a hardship fund to ensure those unable to afford the cost of our services are supported to access them.
 

This will be kept under regular review informed by feedback from our beneficiary community.

Services covered by the policy

The policy will apply to all services delivered to families within our community and those supporting/working with them, including our benefits information, advice and support; our information, advice and support relating to the recruitment, employment, training and management of SSWs; our training provision for families and their personal networks.

While the principles set out in this policy will for the most part apply to charges for services delivered to professionals, such as our DDP Pace Training, we may exercise more discretion in relation to those charging decisions.

Our approach to charging

The Belay Foundation’s model relies on four sources of income:

  1. Payments for our off-the-shelf information and advice products
  2. Fee income covering the staff time and overheads associated with service delivery by team members
  3. Restricted and unrestricted funding from charitable and statutory funders
  4. Public donations.
 

In light of our need to generate income to support our ongoing work, our decision to charge for some of our services is essential to ensure that The Belay Foundation is able to fulfil its charitable mission. In order to do this, it needs to be able to recover part of the costs of service delivery, ensuring financial sustainability; to maintain service quality through stable funding; and to extend provision of services to more families.

Basis for calculating charges

The Belay Foundation commits to determining charges for our services based on partial cost recovery, taking into account: direct delivery costs, a proportionate contribution to overheads, benchmarking against comparable services in the voluntary and statutory sectors, and affordability considerations for beneficiaries. We also commit to an annual  review of all charges by the Operational Team, for approval by the Board of Trustees.

Ensuring access and affordability

The Belay Foundation will take the following steps to ensure that families are not denied support because of financial hardship:

  • Fee waiver: Full waiver of fees for families who are able to demonstrate an inability to pay through provision to the Belay staff team of evidence of receipt of Universal Credit, enabled over time through fundraising for a hardship fund to support this access.
  • Statutory support: We will seek to build partnerships with local authorities, RAAs and VAAs which will see them covering the costs of Belay’s services for families within the community they support.
  • Use of volunteers: We will seek to recruit a pool of volunteers who could provide the free 1:1 support to families who are unable to pay for consultation support, in the first instance for benefits advice and (in 26/27) through the SSW process.
  • Advocacy: We will, over time, develop a programme of policy advocacy through which we hope successfully to make the case for post-adoption support funds to cover the cost of both the hourly rate of Specialist Support Workers but also the costs of Belay’s support for the recruitment, employment, training and management of the same.

Policy review

The Belay Foundation will monitor the impact of charging on accessibility and equity and the keep this policy under regular review, particularly during the pilot phase of our new service delivery model.

Policy review date: December 2025

Next review date: June 2026

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