The Young Kinship Champions group, set up by charity Kinship and funded by BBC Children in Need, will see 30 young people aged 14 to 17 create and deliver campaigns to raise kinship care awareness and accelerate policy, practice and legislative change.
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The group will ask MPs, local authority councillors and leaders in social care, education, health and family justice to meet with them, bringing young peoples’ lived experience and voice to the design of kinship care support.
The young people are based in six north London boroughs - Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey and Islington - and will be supported by a youth worker who will work alongside the charity’s team of Kinship Connected project workers who deliver on-the-ground support for kinship carers in the area.
This approach will enable Kinship to provide joined-up support to kinship families where needed, the charity has said.
The project comes following research carried out by Kinship, formerly known as Grandparents Plus, in 2017 which recommended that “kinship care should have the same status as other routes to permanence”.
The report also states that “there needs to be a greater awareness of the situation of young people in kinship care”.
More than 200,000 children and young people in the UK are living in kinship care, according to figures from the charity, however, recent research shows that 71 per cent of carers said they did not feel people know what kinship care is.
Lucy Peake, chief executive at Kinship said: “Around 200,000 children in the UK are growing up in kinship care, yet their voices are rarely heard and their experiences frequently absent from debates about policy and service development.
“We’re excited to receive funding from BBC Children in Need to create opportunities for a group of kinship care experienced young people to influence the future of kinship care nationally. We can’t wait to see the impact our young champions will make.”
