DAILY POST: Foster care for your kids has its price; YOUR VOICE IN WALES.

IT is surprising that a local authority should be considering a charge on parents who voluntarily give up their children for foster or social care.

First of all, it is hard to contemplate the circumstances when any parent would willingly seek to offload their offspring unless the pressure was such that their living at home was less than intolerable.

Such a decision could hardly be taken lightly and one would think there could be no alternative to such a drastic step.

Conwy council's cabinet will no doubt be giving the proposal for charges serious scrutiny when it comes before them, although some believe that this could be a pioneering step which other Welsh authorities will be sure to follow.

The concept means that some parents struggling to cope with their children will be forced to pay more than pounds 8,700-a-year for foster and social care under a radical, cost-saving scheme.

Conwy council is quick to deny children could be put at risk by the plan.

It would save the authority thousands of pounds a year by cutting the local authority's bill for care provided under section 20 of the Children Act 1989.

For 15 years, most local authorities believed the administrative costs of collecting the money from parents would not make the scheme worthwhile.

County officials are already in favour of the change in policy. By coincidence, Conwy has set the highest rate of council tax rise in Wales.

Now they might charge pounds n8.6o-a-week to parents who give up children up to age four, pounds 135.10 for five to 10-year-olds and pounds 168.18 for eleven to - 15-year-olds.

There are 50 children looked after under section 20 of the Children Act in Conwy.

The council estimates around 15% of those parents should be able to make a financial contribution.

There is no charge proposed for children removed for their own safety.

But the council must be sure that its charging message does not result in parents who need help being deterred from seeking it, for their sake and their children's.