This commitment is rooted in the values of our founders, who were dedicated to ensuring that kinship carers from all communities received the support they needed. We are uniquely equipped to undertake this important work, drawing on years of expertise in supporting kinship families.
This and the dedication to better understand and respond to the experiences of kinship families from minority communities is very important to me personally and professionally.
I am a black woman of African Caribbean descent. My mother was a Windrush pioneer – a nurse with the dream that her children would get a good education and make something of their lives. Times were not easy for my mother. Her children experienced periods of separation from her.
Kin stepped in to clothe, feed, care and love us as circumstances meant that sometimes she needed to live in different places. Kin stepping in, informally, was a very common experience back then and still is, because even if formal support is available, there is often little to no trust in social services, the social welfare system or the police. Where and how we lived was invisible - when the system finally got involved in our lives it harmed us more than it helped us.
This research begins to bring the voices and lived experiences of black and Asian carers in England to light. It is vital because we know that kinship care is prevalent in black and Asian communities in England but there is a gap in our knowledge of their experiences.
The findings show that while kinship carers from black and Asian communities in the study have faced similar challenges to other kinship carers, they believed their ethnicity may have impacted their experience of accessing support.
The research participants testimonies in the report make for powerful reading. The strengths that they are demonstrating, despite systems often working against them and the levels of exclusion they are experiencing, are incredible.
The importance of amplifying and learning from those lived experiences has to be at the centre of any way that we shape our practise responses, or the way that we go on to design a kinship care system. We want a system that is responsible and sensitive to the needs of all kinship carers and their children, who are at the centre of this as much as the carers.
Thank you to the strong and loving grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and other family who have stepped up to raise children and who have generously shared their experiences with us. With a focus on kinship care like never before we need to ensure we are designing and delivering services that are attuned to the needs of black and Asian families. I'm positive that we're going to we're going to get to those changes.
