The Early Intervention ISA – invest in helping others?

Would you put a bit more money into a savings scheme if you knew the money was being used to help other families? The government’s latest plan to prevent teenagers going off the rails and support parents struggling to cope is “The Early Intervention ISA”. Put simply it encourages better off families to invest in helping other families by offering them a tax break. They will be allowed to put £200 a year more into a tax free ISA if they allow the money from that ISA to be invested into schemes which are designed to help other families, by for example, helping to steer teenagers away from alcohol or offering teenage mothers more support. The Government’s new Junior ISA’s which will be introduced in November to replace the Child Trust Fund may be invested in the same way. The aim seems to be to find a way to fund schemes which prevent children from being put into care, which from all the evidence, costs more than sending a child to Eton and leaves them with the greatest risk of growing up unhappy, badly educated, and well on the way to prison. Anything which helps more families to stay together and keeps children out of care has to be good news. The Early Intervention ISA, sounds alarmingly simple and sensible, I wonder what the catch is? How would you help families to look after their children and prevent them from being put into care? Is it as simple as providing parenting classes or giving teenage parents a more grown up role model or mentor to turn to? What would you do if you given the job of providing “Early Intervention?” for troubled families? Share your ideas in the comments section. Amanda Deal of the day: Prepare for a rainly summer by investing in a bit more Lego – you can never have enough and if you buy it through KidStart you can save 5% to put in your Kiddybank account Scary statistic of the day: City law firm Wedlake Bell put in a freedom of information request to find out how much employers paid out in redundancy in the last 12 months – the answer? £4.4 Billion