Kinship Carers: Statutory Paid Employment Leave Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Perran Moon
Main Page: Perran Moon (Labour - Camborne and Redruth)Department Debates - View all Perran Moon's debates with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Kinship Carers: Statutory Paid Employment Leave
Perran Moon Excerpts(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Melanie Onn
We are very popular! I will give way first to my hon. Friend and then to the Lady.
Perran Moon
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing us this debate. Does she agree that, with over a thousand children in kinship care in Cornwall, kinship carers play a vital role in keeping vulnerable children in loving family networks, and that when 45% of kinship carers lose their job after taking on the care of a child, we must do more to ensure that those carers receive the support that they need?
Melanie Onn
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. The concern for kinship carers is that they either have to give up work voluntarily or fall foul of their employer’s terms and conditions merely by taking on the moral duty of caring for a child. Introducing statutory paid employment leave for kinship carers would send a signal in society that we recognise the importance of family arrangements and that those family arrangements extend not just to birth parents, adoptive parents or foster parents, but to kinship families as well.