CYP Now - What the government’s National Kinship Care Strategy means to me as a kinship carer

I was five full years into raising my nephew before I heard the term kinship care. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a foster carer saying that… that they had been a foster carer for five years before they came across a word for what they were doing.

Kelly Taylor (left) speaks on a panel around kinship care at this year's NCASC conference. Picture: ADCS/Twitter

People like me have been taking in their nephews and nieces, grandchildren, younger siblings and neighbours’ kids, when their parents were not able to care for them, since the dawn of time. Most people are fundamentally good, and when good people know a child who is in need of love, care and a home, they will put their own needs and desires to one side and work out how to provide for them.

It is remarkable then, that it has taken until now for a UK government to declare kinship care - in which more than twice the number of children are raised than in foster care - an area of the children’s social care landscape in need of its own dedicated strategy and investment.

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