Postcode lottery leaves carers in poverty

THOUSANDS of grandparents who become family carers are the victims of a postcode lottery in the allowances they receive.

A special report by The Herald reveals that in some local authorities “kinship carers” are receiving little or no money to help them, while those in other council areas receive £200 a week.

These carers are usually grandparents or other relatives who step in to look after children whose parents are unable to cope because of addiction or other health problems. They remove children from the care system, saving the taxpayer millions.

Carers were led to expect they would get a regular allowance related to those paid to foster parents following the Concordat in April last year between the Scottish Government and Cosla, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Jessie Harvey, of the North Glasgow kinship care group and part of a delegation that lobbied children’s minister Adam Ingram, said: “Social workers told me they wipe their brow in relief every time they hand a child over to a grandmother because they know that one is safe.

“What they seem to forget is that our kids also have rights. If my grandson was fostered with the woman next door, she would have all the allowances, plus extra payments for holidays and birthdays. I had to give up my job to look after him and all I have is income support.”

A snapshot of allowances paid to relatives who take in children who would otherwise go into care reveals they vary from nothing to around £200 a week. This postcode lottery is the result of different policies among councils and a high concentration of kinship care in areas such as Glasgow. Glasgow City Council began to pay £40 a week to kinship carers in January – although not all yet receive it – and expects the annual bill to be £1.4m.

The number of children brought up by kinship carers in Scotland is thought to be around 10,000. The exact number is not known because most start as a family response to an emergency and continue as an informal arrangement.

Increasingly, these become long-term arrangements, sometimes formalised by court orders or children’s hearings. At the last count, they numbered over 2000. In Glasgow alone, where there are more than 550 children in kinship care, the number is increasing by 10% every year.

The real scandal is that most of the children and their carers live in severe poverty, despite saving councils millions of pounds.

Delegate Tommy McFall describes the situation as “apartheid” because legislation to improve allowances favours children in foster care.

He said: “We take on these children because we want to do the best for them by keeping them in the family environment, but after social work is satisfied that they are being suitably cared for, supervision orders are removed, and there is no access to counselling or psychological support for children who have been damaged and are full of anger.”

Councillor Isabel Hutton, Cosla’s Education, Children and Young People Spokesperson, insisted councils are committed to increasing support for kinship carers and are working with the Scottish Government to support full implementation.

She said: “However, it should be recognised councils have come from different starting points in relation to kinship care and will necessarily implement this policy at different points between now and 2011.”