Kinship Carers

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. It is also a pleasure to see the new Minister in her place. I wish her well.

I start by sincerely thanking the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), not only for securing today’s important Westminster Hall debate, but for her tireless work on this subject. I know that kinship carers across the country are very grateful for the voice she gives to this cause. I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care and as a kinship carer myself. As many hon. Members will know, my wife Allison and I care for our extraordinary three-and-a-half-year-old grandson Lyle. Soon after Lyle was born, it became clear that his birth parents would be unable to care for him, and Allison and I went through the family court before securing a special guardianship order. That is a heavily truncated version of the story, which spares listeners the seemingly endless legal wranglings, anxiety, confusion, fear and frustration that the vast majority of kinship carers will understand. At the end of the process to become a kinship carer, provided there is a positive outcome, those carers will be left caring for a child that they will love unconditionally, but the process itself is nothing short of traumatising.

I could spend hours talking about my experience, and many more hours sharing the experiences of people I have spoken to in my capacity as APPG chair. Instead, I will reiterate some key figures, which speak to the current state of the child welfare system. The independent review of children’s social care in England projects that there will be nearly 100,000 children in care in England by 2032. Unless we implement the systematic change that families are crying out for, the system will be overwhelmed. Personally, I think that ship has sailed. Provision for looked-after children living with unrelated foster carers or in residential homes is already extremely stretched.

Local authorities routinely place children in accommodation far away from their families and their support networks. I am sure many hon. Members will have read the recent BBC story about the shocking decision to place one 12-year-old boy 100 miles away from his siblings and school. That is just not acceptable. We need to utilise family support networks, and to incentivise kinship care. We are not doing either of those things, and children and families are suffering as a result.

As many hon. Members know, poverty is an enormous issue for kinship carers. Research by the Family Rights Group points to the fact that 75% of kinship carers experience severe financial hardship. Almost half of them—49%—are forced to leave their jobs to provide adequate care for children, many of whom have complex needs arising from trauma, as the hon. Member for Twickenham set out in her opening speech. It is worth noting that, because of the cost of living crisis, those figures will only get worse unless more is done to support kinship carers. I would be grateful if the Minister recognised in her response the dire financial situation that many kinship carers find themselves in, and outlined what the Government plan to do to reverse that worrying trend.

Another issue is the legal system. A scarcity of legal aid, combined with a system that can generously be described as convoluted, means that many kinship carers literally do not know where to turn for help. There is also little regard for how the process can further split families that are already under enormous emotional and financial pressure. That was highlighted in the all-party parliamentary group’s recent legal aid inquiry, which I was proud to chair.

We need to see better access to information, support networks and support services for kinship carers. Make no mistake: empowering kinship care has benefits far beyond improving the lives of children and those who care for them. The charity Kinship estimates that for every reduction of 1,000 in the number of children looked after in local authority care, up to £40 million is saved. Put simply, the moral benefits of supporting kinship care are matched by the economic case for supporting kinship care.

Allison and I were lucky enough to be in a financial position to seek the requisite legal support. It was costly. Even with that support, the experience was totally overwhelming. It impacted our work and caused immense emotional strain. As an aside, it would be nice to see the Houses of Parliament—this House of Commons—take a lead. When the social services stork dropped a baby at our front door, there was no provision for me to take paternity leave, because I was not the father. I was the grandfather—the kinship carer. That is crazy, and it shows how much the system has to change. My wife, a local councillor, literally had to arrange her entire diary around the care of a new baby for whom we had not planned. It caused enormous problems with her work, and enormous strain for both of us.

But I would do it all again, of course. That is just the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham. She is my friend: out goes the etiquette in this debate. All kinship carers do it because they love their families. They love their grandchildren, nephews or nieces. They want to support the family, and to support that young child. Should people have to go through all that we went through just to care for a child whom they love so dearly? I do not think anyone in this Chamber would say that they should. We need comprehensive change.

The Minister will no doubt be aware that the independent review of children’s social care made a number of far-reaching proposals, including an extension of legal aid to more kinship carers, an entitlement to kinship employment leave and a single legal definition of kinship care to improve recognition and access to support. The Department for Education indicated that it is considering those recommendations, and will publish an implementation strategy later this year—there is not much of this year left.

In her response, will the Minister provide more information about the strategy? When will it be published? Are all the recommendations relating to kinship care being considered? Is there any way she can expedite the response, to provide clarity to kinship carers? There needs to be a sense of urgency. Every day that passes without action from Government is another day when carers try to navigate an emotional and legal labyrinth. That hurts families. It hurts the childcare system. It hurts children, who deserve to be looked after in a caring, safe and supportive environment. Minister, it is time for that change.