Press Release 1st July 2021
Helping 16-18s throughout Scotland find their Child Trust Funds
Of the 448,000 Child Trust Funds (CTFs) opened for young people in Scotland, an estimated 153,000 belong to 16-18 year-olds. In this age range, young people are allowed to take control of their accounts; but account providers report that 58% of 18 year-olds (the age at which they can withdraw their money) have yet to claim their funds, typically worth over £1,000. A huge proportion of these accounts are ‘Addressee Gone Away’ or have never been registered, thus risking losing access to their money. This particularly impacts more disadvantaged young people.
The Share Foundation, working with HMRC and CTF account providers, is running a UK-wide series of Virtual CTF Events for 16-18 year-olds to help them find their accounts, with the next event arranged for Tuesday 6th July at 7 pm for young people in Scotland. Its completely free search facility, https://findCTF.sharefound.org introduces 60% of young people directly to their account provider within two working days (with the remainder requiring HMRC linkage arranged by The Share Foundation).
The Virtual CTF Event runs for about 30 minutes with short videos and a breakout session for groups of young people to ask any questions they may have to our CTF ambassadors.
The link to register for the 6th July event is: https://www.sharefound.org/scotland-ctfs/ : please publicise it as widely as possible!
to find out more, please visit https://www.sharefound.org/ctf-virtual-events
or contact: Gavin Oldham OBE 01296-310410 or 07767-337696 gavin.oldham@sharefound.org
Notes about The Share Foundation
The Share Foundation www.sharefound.org (registered charity no. 1108068), has operated the Department for Education’s savings/investment schemes for looked-after children and young people since 2012, during which time it has benefited over 165,000 young people. Its analysis over the past three years has shown that very large numbers of families and young people generally are unaware of their Child Trust Fund accounts, particularly among the most disadvantaged (those in receipt of Child Tax Credit). The Share Foundation is therefore undertaking a programme of general recovery for the scheme, part of which is the CTF Ambassadors initiative (www.CTFAmbassadors.org.uk).
