We must ensure kinship care is properly valued so more children can stay within families
A young Melanie with her great aunt and a family lodger
3 min read
From the age of seven, I was raised by my great aunt.
Initially I was only supposed to spend the summer with her, but I never went back to live with my mum. There were no state agencies involved. It was all kept within the family and drifted into a permanent arrangement. We didn’t have a particular word for it back then, but today we know it as kinship care.
There are more than 180,000 children across the UK raised in kinship care. Their carers are often their grandparents, but also brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, and family friends. Many are in informal arrangements, like mine was. For others, children’s services and the family court are involved. Some kinship children are looked after in the care system where a relative or friend is their registered foster carer. Others are subject to a special guardianship order, which gives their carer some security to make decisions without breaking the legal bond with their parents.
Too many children are missing out on the opportunity to live safely in their family
It is love and commitment that motivates kinship carers to step in for the children. They ensure children can remain safely within their family instead of becoming separated in foster care with strangers, in a children’s home or being adopted. Research shows that kinship care provides better outcomes for children than other forms of non-parental care, including for their mental health, their school achievements, and their employment outcomes. With record numbers of children in a care system creaking at the seams, more could be living safely in their families with the right support.
Despite this, too often kinship care is undervalued and under-supported. Love alone cannot put food on the table or pay for the next school trip. Neither can it provide job security when carers are faced with a myriad of appointments to attend, or simply need time to settle traumatised children into a new home. Children and their carers can require practical, emotional, educational and financial support. But provision is too often dependent on whether the child has been looked after in the care system, or where they live.
I am proud to have been elected as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kinship Care, which now has over 50 members across Parliament. Come and join us if you haven’t already. The group is serviced by the specialist charity Family Rights Group, which has long been at the forefront of this work. We have strong cross-party support including vice-chairs Munira Wilson MP from the Liberal Democrats who championed the Kinship Care Bill in the last parliament, and Joe Robertson MP, an experienced family solicitor and newly elected Conservative MP.
Important progress has been made since I started my parliamentary campaigning on this issue back in 2015. The term was little known, and we fought hard to secure recognition including the two-child tax credit exemption for kinship families. Today, there is a dedicated kinship care team at the Department for Education and a national kinship care strategy. Our APPG recently met with children’s minister Janet Daby who said kinship care is a key priority for the government.
Despite this, too many children are missing out on the opportunity to live safely in their family. And too many kinship families are stepping up for children and struggling to access the support their families need. With opportunities like the upcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill, we have to make this Parliament the one where kinship care is hardwired into the child welfare system once and for all.
Melanie Onn is Labour MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes
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