My Lords, my amendments in this group address the issue of kinship care. Amendment 44 concerns:
“Support for family and friends carers when children are not looked after”.
Amendment 45 addresses carers’ allowances and financial support. I should ask for the Committee’s patience in my speaking to these amendments; some of these issues are rather complex and all are important.
Both amendments seek greater support for family and friends carers. Last week, I described such people as heroes—and so they are. They take over the care of children, very often in the direst circumstances, and lack the support that they need and deserve. I am grateful to the Kinship Care Alliance, which includes many organisations concerned with children’s families’ rights, for its tireless and highly professional support for family and friends carers, and for its determination to seek a better deal.
The House has discussed family and friends carers many times before. Some colleagues may remember the discussions, which have notably taken place in Bills concerned with welfare. Ministers from both sides of the House have been sympathetic, and some adjustments
to the situation have been made, but not enough. I used to meet kinship carers regularly when I chaired the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, because many of the carers looked after children of a relative who had a drug or alcohol problem. I became aware of what a brilliant job these carers do, often without or with very little support, and often to the detriment of their own physical, emotional and mental health, particularly if they are older carers such as grandparents. Kinship carers take over the care of young relatives because they want the best for them, often in an emergency, such as the sudden death of a child’s parent. I remember a grandmother in a London borough whose daughter died suddenly late at night, and who took over caring for three children aged between one and 10 in a one-bedroom flat. “You know what they call us?”, she said, “The midnight grannies”.
Two key issues underline what I have to say. One is that the outcomes for children who are looked after by a relative are better than those for children looked after outside the family. Secondly, such care saves an enormous amount of money. The cost of a place in independent foster care is £40,000, and the average cost to the state of care proceedings is more than £25,000. However, research indicates that most family and friends care arrangements—86%—are initiated by carers themselves, rather than social workers seeking them out.
An estimated 300,000 children are being raised by relatives and friends. Only an estimated 6% of children who are raised in family and friends care are looked after by the local authority and placed with approved foster carers. By far the majority live with their relatives and friends outside this care system, either with the parents’ agreement, or under a residence order or special guardianship order granted by the courts. Despite the lack of support, children in the care of family and friends do better in terms of attachment. They have a sense of belonging, a sense of safety and the confidence that they will not be moved about. This results in better educational outcomes and fewer behavioural problems. There is a greater likelihood of an ethnic match—88% as opposed to 78%.
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Kinship care may well be the best thing for children where possible and it is consistent with their rights under the European convention to support family life. It is also an increasingly practical option for children unable to live with their parents, given the record numbers of children-in-care proceedings and the severe shortage of unrelated foster carers, which result in many children in care experiencing temporary placements, being split up from siblings and having to move from their school and family networks. Yet many kinship carers are under severe strain. In a recent survey, 95% said that they experienced at least one unmet need for support and most mentioned several. More worryingly, carers who were raising the most difficult children were receiving no support at all.
According to the experience of the Kinship Care Alliance in advising thousands of families and friend carers every year, this lack of support is due to three major factors. First, they are not entitled to local
authority financial or other support for these children—for example, help with contact arrangements, bereavement counselling or challenging behaviour. If a child is looked after by a local authority, the carer must be approved as a foster carer and they are entitled to a fostering allowance. However, 94% of kinship carers are not in that category. If a child is not looked after by a local authority, then financial support is discretionary. Yet carers often face enormous costs—for example, the need to give up a job, to adjust their homes, to buy extra equipment and clothing for the children, as well as possibly some childcare. I have also heard of cases where kinship carers have had to pay enormous sums of money in legal bills to secure the child’s future with them. Although there is a duty on local authorities to establish a special guardianship support service, similar to adoption support, this does not give an individual carer the right to a specific service. Moreover, there is no equivalent support service for children in kinship care under a residence order or no order.