Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of introducing paid kinship care leave for new kinship carers on (a) those carers and (b) the children in their care.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

Kinship carers play an extremely important role in both their kin children’s lives and in the Children’s Social Care system.

On 2 February 2023, the department published its consultation and Children’s Social Care implementation strategy, ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which sets out how the department will achieve broad, system wide transformation. Through this strategy, the department has made a commitment to implement or explore each of the Review’s recommendations on kinship care.

The department has committed to work across government to explore possible additional workplace entitlements for kinship carers with a special guardianship order or child arrangement order.

The department is also committed to publishing a national kinship care strategy by the end of 2023, which builds on feedback the department received following the publication of ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’. This will provide an update on reform activity. The strategy will set out a long term vision for kinship care and detail how the department can better support children and carers. The department sees this as a pivotal moment for kinship care and is an opportunity to make real and lasting change.