sharefound - The Share Foundation

The Share Foundation, or sharefound for short, is the registered charity which runs the savings account (Child Trust Fund and Junior ISA) schemes for children and young people in care throughout the UK on behalf of the Department for Education. We are particularly concerned to ensure that all disadvantaged young people have the resources and life skills to make the most of their opportunities in adult life. including literacy, numeracy, the ability to manage their finances, plan for their future and secure further education, employment or training. There’s a great opportunity to do this with the Child Trust Fund, the account opened with Government contributions for almost all children born in the UK between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011. Over six million accounts were opened and are now valued at an average c. £1,500 each. They are all being administered safely with regulated account providers, but one third – two million – of these accounts are lost to the young people concerned, largely because they had to be opened by HMRC, because no action had been taken by parents within one year of birth. 1.2 million accounts were opened by HMRC for children in families receiving Child Tax Credit – 85% of these are now either ‘Addressee Gone Away’ or have never been registered. A further 1 million are also lost to disadvantaged families. The oldest Child Trust Fund recipients reach 18, when they should get access to their money, on 1/9/2020. Because they're allowed to take control of their account from their 16th birthday, we've set up https://findCTF.sharefound.org to help them find it. Our multi-layered recovery campaign for the Child Trust Fund scheme operates across the UK, and we’d like to work with schools and other organisations which can help us contact 16 and 17 year olds. With so many approaching adulthood imminently with lost CTFs (we estimate over 350,000 16/17 year olds), please will you help us contact these young people to tell them the good news?