Kinship care: an opportunity not to be missed

We’ve probably all been touched by kinship care at some point in our lives. For me, back in the 1980s and 90s, my parents brought up my two nephews for much of their childhood. There’s no doubt that the focus and profile government is giving to kinship care is long overdue and the importance and impact of kinship care on children can never by overstated.

Following the publication of Stable Homes Built on Love, ADCS put together a working group of directors of children’s services to examine the existing barriers to kinship care and consider how things could be done differently. ADCS president John Pearce asked me to lead this which I was delighted to do although it became quickly evident that it was not going to be straightforward, and honestly, a lot harder than we thought, going backwards and forwards over what this new and improved system should look like and how it should be implemented. Ultimately, we decided to narrow our thoughts to the fundamental principles which we see as being non-negotiable and think should be at the heart of a new system leading to us publishing a paper on this in the autumn.