Individual Child Trust Fund accounts were opened for almost every child born in the UK between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011. At the age of 16, they are allowed to take control of their account, and at 18 to access their money.
Unfortunately, very large numbers of young people are wholly unaware of the existence and whereabouts of their CTF accounts, which are being administered by a range of account providers. It is the most disadvantaged who are least aware, most often because they are either ‘addressee gone away’ or the account was never registered by the family following its opening by HMRC.
Recent feedback from account providers shows that c. 58% of 18 year-old CTF owners have yet to claim their accounts: in Scotland that’s already over 25,000 young adults who already risk losing access to their accounts, which are typically worth £1,000 or more. The Share Foundation (www.sharefound.org) is the registered charity which runs the Child Trust Fund and Junior ISA schemes for looked-after young people for the Department for Education. They have set up a programme of large-scale virtual events for young people aged 16-18, and a search process (https://findCTF.sharefound.org) linked to the account providers and HMRC, in order to ensure that as many as possible find their accounts. There are no charges – we just want to make the CTF scheme as effective as possible so that money set aside for young people does not end up as dormant assets.
These Zoom-based virtual events are being professionally co-ordinated, with pre-registration and recording, and they run for just over half an hour. They are being arranged with lots of participation, with break-out groups which include our CTF Ambassadors – volunteers who can explain and answer questions. New videos have been produced for the events, which are also accessible on YouTube.
For full details of the events, including links to the new videos, please visit https://www.sharefound.org/ctf-virtual-events A virtual event will be held for Scottish young people on Tuesday 6th July at 7 pm.
REGISTRATION LINK: https://www.sharefound.org/scotland-ctfs/
Numbers are limited for the events, but they will be running them each fortnight going forwards and the registration links for other events are included in the webpage above.
