Speaking at a support event for carers in Woolwich, south east London earlier this week (7 October), Daby, who is a former children’s social worker, added: “You shouldn’t have to fight so much for your rights."
While speaking with the group of kinship carers, Daby announced the appointment of the new kinship care ambassador, Jahnine Davis, who accompanied her on the visit.
Davis will work alongside organisations like Kinship and with kinship carers and their children to advise the government to how to boost support for families.
Daby told CYP Now that the ambassador’s appointment was “really essential as it will drive forward an independent voice for the community”.
“For me that will really highlight where the key problems we need to be looking at are,” she added.
The minister, who is MP for Lewisham East, said that increasing support for kinship carers to keep children within their families where possible is a priority for the Department for Education.
“It’s about what we can do to support families to stay together.
“Areas like family support and family group conferencing are really significant to me as well as making sure we go out to the extended family to see where children can be placed,” she said.
The event was held during Kinship Care Week, during which Kinship published new which finds that children in kinship care are “being plunged into poverty.”
The charity’s Make or Break report surveyed more than 1,300 kinship carers across England and Wales and found that kinship carers were more than twice as likely to depend on food banks than other UK adults.
“With most kinship carers receiving little to no financial support to cover the costs of raising a child, and no statutory right to employment leave like adoptive parents get when they take on the care of a child, kinship families are especially vulnerable to rising cost of living and inflationary pressures,” the report states.
The charity’s chief executive Lucy Peake told CYP Now: “So many of our kinship carers are struggling with the basics, they’re relying on food banks more than the general population, there are spending all their savings, some are giving up their jobs overnight to take care of children and they don’t get an allowance like foster carers.
“We would like to see an allowance for kinship carers that’s not means tested and that can’t be stopped – that’s a key priority for us.”
- Read a full interview with children’s minister Janet Daby and kinship care ambassador Jahnine Davis in the November edition of CYP Now.
