Kinship carers blast council support

More than 70 per cent of kinship carers have labelled their local council’s efforts to support them as poor or very poor.

In a survey of 490 family and friend carers carried out for Family Rights Group just under half (44 per cent) said they had received no practical help from their local authority.

A significant majority (95 per cent) said there was at least one form of support from councils they had sought in vain, while seven out of 10 respondents rated their council’s support as either poor or very poor.

The survey is part of a wider study of kinship care support carried out by the charity with Oxford University’s Centre for Family Law and Policy.

This included Freedom of Information requests to councils, which found 45 per cent of the 141 councils that responded had not published a family and friends care policy, even though the Family and Friends Care: Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities, published in March last year requires them to do so.

Family Rights Group chief executive Cathy Ashley said: “These people are relieving a great deal of pressure from the state care system and acting in the best interests of incredibly vulnerable children, benefiting the rest of society. They deserve better.

“The amount and type of support carers receive from local authorities appears to bear little or no relationship to the child’s or carer’s needs, which is absolutely shocking.”

The study also found that one in five children is placed in foster care before being moved to a kinship arrangement. Family Rights Group said this creates upheaval for children in many cases and places an unnecessary burden on social care budgets.

The study featured interviews with 95 kinship carers and found that 38 per cent of this group have high levels of stress. The same proportion reported that children in their care have emotional and behavioural problems.

It is estimated that 250,000 children live in a kinship care arrangement.