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Gary Vaux explains a grant that can be used to improve the lives of disabled foster children.

Disabled facilities grants are a very specialised part of the benefit system, but they can make an enormous difference to an individual. Does your authority make full use of the disabled facilities grant? In particular, have they even noticed a significant change for foster parents?

A circular issued by the Department of Environment, Transport and Regions in April advises that, from 2 April, long-term foster parents can apply for grants in the same way as natural and adoptive parents.

The disabled facilities grant (DFG) is a means-tested grant which is administered by housing authorities (district and borough councils in non-unitary areas) for adaptations to property to meet the needs of disabled people. The upper limit for mandatory help is £20,000 at present. The means-test is largely based on housing benefit, at least as far as income is concerned, so fostering allowances are generally ignored as a source of income.

The circular also advises that if an application is approved and the foster carer is assessed to make a contribution to the adaptations, the local social services should consider whether to fund this contribution.

Because of this possible new source of funding, your authority might want to look at requests from foster carers for adaptations to meet the needs of disabled children and make sure they are considered only after the outcome of a DFG application (including the means test) is known.

Applications for grant assistance will generally be dealt with by the housing or environmental health department of your local council. Some grants are mandatory, others discretionary.

The applicant can be an owner or tenant (including licensees). The grant is mandatory for work providing disabled people with essential adaptations to give better freedom of movement into and around the home and to essential facilities within it. Where necessary it can also provide the facilities themselves. The types of work are:

- To improve access to the building or individual rooms, such as widening doors, installing ramps and stair-lifts, or providing downstairs facilities.

- To ensure the safety of the disabled person and other occupants by, for example, providing a specially adapted room in which it would be safe to leave a disabled person unattended.

- To improve or provide a heating system suitable to the needs of the disabled person.

- To adapt heating or lighting to make them easier to use.

- To improve access and movement around the home to care for another person who lives in the property, such as a spouse, child or another person for whom the disabled person cares.

The council also has discretion to give grants for a wide range of other works to make a home suitable for accommodation, welfare or employment needs. Such works could include providing a safe play area for a disabled child or providing or adapting an existing room to work from home. The council also has discretion to give a grant for works that qualify for mandatory grants where the cost would exceed £20,000.

Recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Money Well Spent: The Effectiveness and Value of Housing Adaptations, see www.jrf.org.uk shows how successful DFGs are in improving and, in many cases, transforming lives.

Disabled people who described themselves as "prisoners", "degraded" and "afraid" before work was carried out, used terms like "independent", "useful" and "confident"afterwards.

DFGs can demonstrably keep people out of hospital, reduce strain on carers, give dignity to disabled people and enable them to lead fuller, more socially included lives. For disabled children (including foster children) and their siblings, they improve educational and life chances too.