Vulnerable Children: Kinship Care

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for again giving us an opportunity to discuss and examine the issue of kinship care. I hope that, as the Minister for education is answering the debate, it is an indication that education will work alongside other government departments to consider and make recommendations on kinship care and vulnerable children. Their health, education and welfare is a cross-government matter.

Of course, children being taken into care of any kind are vulnerable. They are all suffering loss. Those being looked after by relatives or friends have often lost a parent or parents through death, imprisonment, drug or alcohol misuse, domestic violence, mental health issues or other trauma. Kinship carers accept these children, some of whom may be very young, because they do not want the child or children to be fostered or adopted outside the family. It is worth remembering that many such carers also become vulnerable at the same time as the child, for reasons I shall discuss.

For about 10 years, I was the chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. In that time, I became aware of the issues facing kinship carers, and I met many of them. They were mainly women and they were mainly grandparents. Some of them had had to give up work to become carers and all had financial difficulties, or were grieving for a son or a daughter who had been lost to them for one reason or another. One grandparent I met, or “midnight granny” as they call themselves, suddenly had to take on three children aged between one and seven when her daughter died of a drug overdose—and yes, it did happen at midnight. This woman, who was widowed, lived in a one-bedroom flat and worked. Her life was turned upside down. She gave up her job and fought to be rehoused. The rehousing from that one-bedroom flat took two years, although there were three children. She reported having no help from social services and spent hours every week filling in forms. This is not an untypical case. The woman became vulnerable as her health suffered, and she became poor. She struggled to pay for food, clothing and toys for the children. She unselfishly cared for those vulnerable children lovingly, as so many kinship carers do.

It is perhaps not so astonishing to learn that children in kinship care often do better socially, emotionally and academically than children in other forms of care. I, too, was pleased to become acquainted with Grandparents Plus and the Family Rights Group, which are both part of the Kinship Care Alliance. These organisations have been stalwart in seeking a good deal for kinship carers and the children they look after. Much has been achieved, but there is much to do, and I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to this cause.

A report from the Family Rights Group and Kinship Care Alliance, which has already been mentioned, points out, interestingly, that 40% of children living in care in England live in the 20% most income-deprived areas, while 95% of children being raised in kinship care are not “looked after” by the local authority. Local authority support to kinship carers is largely at the council’s discretion. Only 5% of children in kinship care are “looked after”, so that they qualify for financial support; the rest suffer. Surely there is an anomaly here. Kinship carers save the Government billions of pounds a year in care costs, but are often treated appallingly by local authorities. When I was working in the substance misuse field, I came across only two local authorities which had dedicated support for family and friends carers, and only around 40% of kinship carers receive regular support from a social worker.

So, along with the Kinship Care Alliance, I would plead with the Government to do three or four things. They should require local authorities to publish a kinship policy, set up a dedicated post to oversee it, particularly in terms of monitoring the progression of children in such care. Kinship carers should be given the same support that is available to adopters, as my noble friend mentioned. Kinship carers should be entitled to free childcare, the pupil premium and priority school admissions. They should be exempt from the limiting of child tax credit to two children, the benefit cap, and the work conditionality rules that have been extended to the carers of under-five year-olds.

In answer to an Oral Question in the House of Commons on 26 October, Edward Timpson, the Minister of State for Children and Families, for whom I have enormous respect, stated that a special guardianship review and social work reform is under way to better support children. He also stated that parental leave, providing greater choice for families trying to balance childcare and work, will help. I am not sure how this latter provision would benefit the kinships carers that I am talking about, so I will need to examine that. But I would like to know when the guardianship review will be finished. Perhaps the Minister could let me know about that later. I look forward to his reply and to his comments on the issues raised in the debate today. Again, I thank my noble friend for introducing it.