Keeping care in the family

When Amy O'Donohoe was 14, she and her brother went to live with their aunt. They were moving from a home life made difficult by their mum's substance and alcohol abuse to a safe and stable environment where they were later joined by their baby sister.

"My aunt and I were already quite close and it meant me and my siblings could stay together, which was hugely important for us," says Amy. "We were used to supporting each other because of never being cared for at home." Yet it wasn't easy forming a new family unit, explains Amy, whose aunt had two children of her own. "We started off with a three-bedroom house with me and my brother sharing a bedroom with my cousin. We had to sleep on the floor and it took months for us to get a bunk bed," she says.

Overcrowding and financial hardship are not uncommon for the 300,000 children and young people in the UK living with relatives, in what is known as kinship - or family and friends - care. Recent investigations into the care system, including the Care Inquiry, have made the case for wider use of kinship care. As well as growing evidence that children fare better, there is the potential for vast savings in care proceedings, placement fees and costs to society.

Yet research has also highlighted a lack of support for this vulnerable group. Under current law, councils must first try to place children who cannot remain with their parents within the wider family. But there are fears that new legislation, including the Children and Families Bill, may get in the way. Organisations such as the Family Rights Group (FRG) are among those pushing for changes to a key clause that would exempt councils from the duty to place a looked-after child with a family member over a prospective adopter.

Meanwhile, a new 26-week deadline for care proceedings under the Family Justice Review could also mean kinship carers miss out. "Most social workers would say it's really good to keep children with their family unless there are significant risk factors, which may be because a parent is persistently violent or other difficulties making it hard for close family to offer protection," says Sue Kent, professional officer for England at the British Association of Social Workers.

However, family members may be reluctant to come forward at first and interventions such as family group conferences, which can help to establish care options within families, take time. "Doing a comprehensive assessment of family members is very time-consuming," says Kent. "Often a foster carer has been through that process, so a social worker under pressure might choose them instead."

When it comes to support for kinship carers, research paints a gloomy picture. While government guidance says support should be based on children's needs, the It's Just Not Fair report, published this year by Oxford University and the FRG, reveals this is not happening. Instead, the most important factor in the amount of support children received was their legal status. Those officially looked after by kinship foster carers were most likely to get a comprehensive package of services.

Support for those cared for under special guardianship orders is discretionary and the report found this was "very much inferior to kinship foster care", while children in informal kinship care arrangements - the vast majority - were worst off. About 95 per cent of kinship care is informal, but there is often confusion about the status of placements that may have initially been set up by social workers. Much of the law surrounding kinship placements is informed by key court judgments, where families and young people have had to fight for their rights to allowances and support.

A recent study of informal kinship carers by Bristol University and the charity Buttle UK concluded that children were doing better than those placed with strangers. Yet it also revealed huge pressures on carers.

Extreme poverty

Buttle UK chief executive Gerri McAndrew says she was shocked by the "extreme poverty" exposed by the in-depth study of 80 carers, many of whom had to give up work to care for children or were struggling to make ends meet on a pension - a situation set to get worse, with these type of families more likely to be hit by changes in benefits and the "bedroom tax".

"We found families were going without things most would regard as basics like hot meals and heating, while more than a third of adults said they could not afford to get themselves winter clothes," she says. "Many have long-term health problems or are clinically depressed."

Carers have to contend with issues including bereavement. A third of children in this study moved in with kinship carers because a parent - often a carer's own son or daughter - had died. They may also have to deal with contact with birth parents who can be threatening and abusive.

A survey of kinship carers published in June by Grandparents Plus, which runs a support network, revealed that many children in kinship care had previously suffered abuse and neglect, had emotional and behavioural difficulties or special needs and disabilities. Yet 44 per cent had never received any help from children's services.

"It is really tough and often a big part of that is not what is going on in the family, but the fact they have to battle to get support to help them cope," says Grandparents Plus chief executive Sarah Wellard. Many carers lack information about existing support and services that could come to their aid and are confused about their rights and different legal frameworks, which is why Grandparents Plus published a Kinship Care Guide for England last month.

Under statutory guidance introduced in September 2011, all local authorities in England must have a clear policy for supporting family and friends care. Yet a survey by the FRG in May found more than a third did not have a policy in place.

Meanwhile, some policies that have been published were "of highly dubious quality", says Cathy Ashley, chief executive of the FRG, which hosts the Kinship Care Alliance.

The government has lately appeared to take notice of kinship carers' needs. In July, children and families minister Edward Timpson wrote to directors of children's services and lead members to urge them to ensure family and friends care policies were in place. The Department for Education also announced it would be providing training for senior children's services managers this autumn "to help make sure family and friends carers policies are working".

According to a DfE spokeswoman, workshops are likely to cover devising good policy and practice, financial support for informal kinship carers and other services, and support such as parenting courses. The DfE is also looking into ways to improve information for carers on entitlements and services, including the creation of an "information hub".

"We expect this hub to help raise awareness of this group of children and carers in doctors' surgeries, schools and childcare settings, which are often the first point of contact for them," she says.

In addition, Buttle UK is planning to work with a number of local authorities and voluntary sector partners to develop and test "a local model of practical support", reveals McAndrew. Although ideally she would like to see a national allowance for kinship carers, she says: "There are things that can be done at a local level and good practice and support doesn't necessarily require a lot of resources. Crucially, it is about making it clear to local authorities that they can't just say 'no' and turn these families away."

Andrew Christie, chair of the Association of Directors of Children's Services' health, care and additional needs committee, says that councils are providing "significant support" for kinship carers looking after children as a result of care proceedings.

When it comes to support for informal kinship carers, he says cash-strapped councils cannot be responsible for the blanket resourcing for the many thousands of children in these arrangements, but adds: "Every local authority should consider requests for help." He says the government needs to do more to provide support and guidance at a national level.

Room for improvement

The Oxford University research points out that some are providing a "better than average" service, while others are striving to do better. Slough, for example, runs an annual conference for family and friends carers on behalf of a group of six local authorities in Berkshire. The first event, in May 2012, included sessions on managing behaviour and dealing with contact, while this year's conference featured more time for carers to talk to each other or professionals on hand to offer advice and information.

"Carers can feel quite isolated, so one of our key goals it to connect people with others in the same boat," says Jackie Pape, team manager for Slough's fostering placement service. Slough has a newsletter for family and friends carers and offers them the chance to take part in support and training evenings alongside foster carers.

Carers were consulted when the authority drew up its family and friends care policy, which includes allowances for special guardianship and residency orders. "If it's right for the child, then we want the placement to be successful. So, for us, it is about providing the right support when required," says Pape.

Also leading the way is Leeds City Council, which recently announced it was increasing fees and allowances for foster carers, adopters and special guardians after a review of local care placements including kinship care.

The authority is also in the process of developing measures designed to strengthen support for informal kinship care arrangements. Kinship carer Julie Wilkes is among those to benefit from the authority's forward-thinking approach. Together she and her husband took on the care of his two grandchildren from a previous marriage - now aged 11 and 13 - after it was decided their mentally ill mother could not look after them, gaining one of the very first special guardianship orders in October 2006.

"We sold the house, relocated and built a new family," says Wilkes, who describes the support they received from Leeds as "fantastic" and "probably the thing that has helped us most apart from our relationship". The authority, which runs a support group for special guardians, played a key role in securing the special guardianship order and provided legal support when there was a challenge to contact arrangements.

Special guardian support

The family received one-to-one support from a social worker to help them cope with difficulties with the birth parents and was also helped by a therapeutic social work team for post-adoption, long-term fostering and kinship care. "We asked for help with life-story work and were immediately given an appointment the following week," says Wilkes. In addition, they know they can turn to Leeds's special guardian support service, which offers a wide range of help, and they get the full fostering allowance for the children up to the age of 18.

While Wilkes has on the whole had a positive experience, she regrets the three years the children spent bouncing in and out of care before coming to them, and wishes children's services had intervened earlier. This is a common complaint among kinship carers who may often be the ones who raise concerns about children's welfare and then have to repair damage caused by authorities not taking action sooner.

She would also like to see more training for social workers in preand post-qualifying courses to raise awareness of the benefits of kinship care and tackle negative assumptions about families. "For the past 20 or so years in social work, fostering and adoption has been seen as the gold standard - the idea that you are removing children from the source of their problems to a nice clean family - and we have to get away from that," she says.

Meanwhile, Amy, who is now 21, says she "dreads to think" what would have happened to her and her siblings if they had not gone to live with family. "I don't think we'd have a relationship with my little sister as she would have been put up for adoption," she says. "And I would not have done so well in school. When I went to university, I could come back at weekends. A lot of young people who leave care at 18 don't have that."

She would like professionals and policymakers to listen more carefully to young people like herself. "The biggest thing for me was a lack of emotional support around being in a new family," says Amy, who also had to fight to get leaving care support. "I don't think people realise how hard it is, particularly at the start.

If families are going to survive, then they need the right support."

WHAT RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT KINSHIP CARE

• It is estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children are brought up by relatives - 1.7 to 2.5 per cent of all children in the UK.
• Only about five per cent of carers are official foster carers, with the vast majority of children living in informal kinship care arrangements.
• About 50 to 60 per cent of children live with grandparents; a large proportion are cared for by siblings - about 40 per cent in England - and a smaller number looked after by aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends.
• 45 per cent of children living with grandparents and other family members have previously suffered abuse or neglect - an estimated 135,000 children across the UK - while 54 per cent have a special need or disability.
• 53 per cent of children had emotional or behavioural problems when they started living with their kinship carer.
• Children fare significantly better than those placed in non-kinship foster care, experiencing levels of attachment and self-esteem similar to the general population, according to research by Bristol University and Buttle UK.
• Nearly all children and young people - 98 per cent - felt settled with carers and reported feeling nurtured and loved.
• Just under three-quarters of carers reported children were doing well or at least okay in school, with 47 per cent planning to go to college and almost two-fifths aiming for university.
• But the same study found many families were living in poverty: 55 per cent of households had no adults in paid work, while 34 per cent had incomes, before housing costs, of less than £200 a week (9,600 a year).
• 73 per cent of carers had long-term health conditions or disabilities.
• 71 per cent had contacted children's services asking for help, but 42 per cent of those requests had been turned down.
• Meanwhile, 72 per cent of kinship carers surveyed for research published by the Family Rights Group rated the support they received from children's services as "poor" or "very poor".
• Of professionals surveyed for the same study, more than half - 53 per cent - identified a gap in support for kinship carers; 11 per cent reported their local authority was "nowhere near" providing the support needed to ensure children's wellbeing.

Sources: Grandparents Plus survey, June 2013; Spotlight on Kinship Care - Shailen Nandy and Julie Selwyn, University of Bristol, April 2011; The Poor Relations? Children and Informal Kinship Carers Speak Out - Julie Selwyn, Elaine Farmer, Sarah Meakings, Paula Vaisey, University of Bristol in partnership with Buttle UK, April 2013; It's Just Not Fair! Support, Need and Legal Status in Family and Friends Care - Joan Hunt and Suzette Waterhouse, Family Rights Group, 2013

LIFE AS A KINSHIP CARER: STRUGGLES AND REWARDS

When Ann and Pete* found out their grandchild would be taken into care as soon as she was born, they immediately stepped forward to say they would care for the baby. "There was no question in our minds," says Ann. "We didn't know if it was a boy or a girl at that stage, but we knew the child needed to be with its own family."

Winning the right to care for baby Sarah* - their son's daughter - was not straightforward and the couple had an even tougher battle to take on the care of Sarah's older half-sister Tiffany*, not a blood relative. "We felt she had the right to be with her sister," says Ann. "We couldn't stand the thought of her growing up and feeling she was not wanted."

The assessment process was draining. "You go from being hailed as the cavalry to being interrogated and made to feel like you have done something wrong," she says. "I do understand why, but at the time it was very stressful and without support from family and friends, I'd have been a gibbering wreck."

The girls were aged 10 months and two years nine months when they eventually came to live with Ann and Pete, who now look after them under a special guardianship order. "It has been traumatic at times," admits Ann. "With the special guardianship order, we make all the rules and don't have to consult the parents. However, we still have to pick up the pieces if mum and dad don't show up for contact or let the girls down."

Tiffany in particular found it hard to adjust and had emotional and behavioural difficulties as a result of rejection and turmoil in her early life. "She used to have terrible temper tantrums," says Ann, who says that once the guardianship order was in place, the family got little ongoing support from children's social services. "We were allocated a student social worker, but we didn't feel she had the right experience. We're lucky to have a fantastic GP, and our daughter and other son have been absolutely brilliant. And we have some very good friends and have talked their ears off."

The couple, who are both in their late 50s, used to get a small allowance, but that stopped after the first two years and Ann says it has been difficult to manage financially. She had to give up her job as a senior nurse to take on a lower-paid agency role in order to be there to look after the girls. "We still have the same bills coming in as we had before, so we're as careful as we can be," she says.

The family has also had to put up with the stigma that can surround kinship care arrangements, explains Ann, who has set up a small local support group. "I have stood at the school gates and heard people whisper: 'Those girls live with their gran - I wonder what went on in that family'. I've turned around and said: 'Why don't you ask me?' If you're not strong, it can be hurtful," she says.

However, Ann and Pete have never regretted their decision to give a loving home to the girls, now aged eight and 10 and "happy and thriving with very good school reports".

"It's the first book, the first steps, the first time Tiffany stamped her feet at us because finally she felt comfortable enough to shout instead of pretending to like us, feeling totally at home," says Ann. "It's getting cuddles in the middle of the night even if they have just been sick, having them fling their arms around you. For me, the benefits far outweigh anything else."

* Names have been changed.