Financial Capability & Life Skills

The Share Foundation has a range of resources to help young people in care build their financial awareness and life skills. These include:

Age 11-14: ‘Making Your Money Work For You’, an online workbook for young people in care aged 11 onwards.

Age 15-17: Stepladder Programme: a six-step online course which is currently available on an incentivised learning basis throughout the United Kingdom, enabling eligible young people (with a Junior ISA or Child Trust Fund) to earn up to an additional £1,500 into their account. The programme, described in this introduction seminar, is also available for adult care leavers up to the age of 25 on a non-incentivised basis.

The Stepladder Programme starts with literacy and numeracy steps before moving through an introductory financial awareness step. The fourth step invites the young person to write 250-500 words on their plans for the future, following which they are invited to take the ‘Managing My Money’ course as the fifth step, a lively audio podcast-based interpretation of the Open University’s course of the same name. The final step provides mentored assistance with finding employment or further education.

We encourage Local Authorities and Virtual Head Teachers to take an active part in introducing the Stepladder programme, and to contribute mentoring support. The Stepladder team at The Share Foundation are here to support your young people on their journey through the programme; this can be via email, telephone or Teams.

Please download a guidance booklet entitled ‘Financial Capability and Looked After Children: The role of Corporate Parents’ prepared by our partner pfeg (now Young Enterprise) designed to help you introduce a financial capability program for children and young people in care. For the Welsh version please click here.

There are also directly accessible resources under the 'Your Junior ISA' section.

In addition to offering the Financial Education programme for young people in care, The Share Foundation are also actively pursuing the development of an online-based ‘Introduction to the Performing Arts’ course which we hope will be available for 13-17 year-olds from early 2025.