Family Rights Group :: Kinship Care Alliance campaign

Valuing Family and Friends Care for Children

The Kinship Care Alliance’s Manifesto on raising children within the wider family as an alternative to care

We are asking politicians to commit to the recommendations set out in this manifesto which will:

- Enable more children who are in the care system to live safely and securely with their wider family.
- Assist many children who are currently being raised by impoverished relatives.

At a time when there is a chronic shortage of foster carers and care proceedings are at record numbers, the proposals in this manifesto make sense both in terms of outcomes for very vulnerable children and cost effectiveness. If they lead even to a reduction of 5% in the care population, it could reduce expenditure on the care system in England and Wales by over £109 million per annum, which could be very effectively reinvested at local and national level to develop and improve support to children in family and friends care arrangements.

There are no official statistics on numbers of children who aren't able to live with parents and are being raised by family and friends carers, but it is estimated that 200-300,000 children are living with grandparents or other wider family members or friends. This may be because of parental mental or physical ill health, domestic abuse, divorce or separation, alcohol or substance misuse, imprisonment or bereavement.

Key facts:

Children raised by family and friends carers feel loved and secure and report high levels of satisfaction;
Family and friends placements offer more stability than unrelated care;
Family and friends carers show a high level of commitment;
The children have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system but they and their carers received much less support;
Many family and friends carers live in impoverished circumstances, which impacts on the children,
for example:
o 3 out 4 of such carers experience severe financial hardship;
o 35% of such carers left or lost their job or took early retirement to raise the children;

“I lost my job as a direct result of having time off to attend court, care for the baby and attend his hospital appointments etc. My husband took redundancy and we had to sell our home and most of the furniture in order to pay the legal costs and fund a move of over 350 miles away to ensure the safety of our grandson...”

Many such carers face crippling legal costs to secure the child’s future;
1 in 4 are lone carers;
1 in 3 live in overcrowded conditions;
3 out of 10 family and friends care have a chronic illness or disability;
69% of local authorities do not have a consistent approach to family and friends care;
8 out 10 people agree that family and friends carers should receive financial support.

We call on all politicians to support the following:

1. That Government collects and publishes official statistics on children being raised by family and friends carers and places a duty on local authorities to collect local data.

2. To enable more children to be raised within their family network by:

Placing a duty on local authorities to:
o  Publish accessible policies and procedures in relation to family and friends care;
o  Explore all safe alternatives for the child’s care within their family network when a child may be removed from home;
o  Commission independent advice and information for relatives when a child cannot live at home;
o  Offer a family group conference to the child and their family before (or immediately afterwards in an emergency) care proceedings are commenced.
Ensuring such duties are properly funded by the Government.

3. To implement a new safe, effective approach to assessment of family and friends as potential carers
Relevant Government guidance and regulations recognize family and friends carers as a specific group (distinct from unrelated foster care) who require tailored policies and support and a bespoke assessment process.

4. To support children in family and friends care to reach their full potential by:

Amending legislation so that children are treated as children in need, and therefore have a right to assessment of their needs;
Placing a duty on local authorities to establish and commission family and friends care support services, including help with contact, help with children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties and setting up local support groups for carers.

“My wife is 75, I am 74. We are both severely disabled, the stress financially and healthwise is immense and we could do with some help please.”

5. To tackle poverty and end financial discrimination against family and friends carers by:

Ending the current postcode lottery related to financial support and introducing a national financial allowance for family and friends carers who are raising children who cannot live with the parents;

“I had to leave a well-paid job, I struggle every day with bills, I go hungry to feed my grandson... we don’t have holidays, I have to go without any social life to afford to keep him.”

Ensuring family and friends carers, who are permanently raising a child, are given the same exemption as unrelated foster carers and temporary family and friends carers in relation to income support rules vs. Job Seeker’s Allowance;
Amending the legal aid rules for family and friends carers to cover their legal costs in order to secure the child’s permanent future with them.

For further information:

To read a detailed background policy brief on family and friends care click here.
To read the detailed recommendations paper on family and friends care click here.

Act now

1. Lobby your MP by writing to them to ask them to support the manifesto.

2. Sign up to the manifesto.

Click here to find out who has pledged to the Kinship Care Alliance manifesto.

- Organisations should email their logo to cashley@frg.org.uk to have their names included on the webpage.

- We will also publish the names of MPs who declare their support for the manifesto