CHILD care solicitor Nigel Priestley has welcomed Government plans to amend the `postcode lottery' for paid foster parents.
The Government is considering setting a uniform rate of payments to foster parents across the country.
Currently local authorities are not obliged to pay the same rate.
Mr Priestley, who works for Ridley & Hall Solicitors in Huddersfield, said: "There must be an urgent change.
"A foster carer looking after a child aged between five and 10 years in Kirklees would receive £123.58 per week; in Leeds it would be £98.75; Bradford about £62.56; and in Wakefield £93.59.
"The child has the same needs and the foster carer has similar costs, yet the levels of payment vary so much."
Mr Priestley said Kirklees Council followed the amount recommended by the Fostering Network because this set out what it actually cost to bring up a child.
But Leeds City Council took the view that they had no obligation to pay at the Fostering Network rates.
Mr Priestley added: "There is a desperate shortage of foster carers and these figures show what a nonsense the present arrangements are.
"Foster carers do a vital job and yet local authorities in this area do not seem able to decide quite what they are worth."
Mr Priestley said that the aunts, grandparents and uncles who took in children faced further hardship.
"All too often they are short-changed," he said.
"Local authorities have repeatedly shown that they are not prepared to pay relatives the same amount as `professional' foster carers and yet they expect them to do the same job."
