Legal Update: Permanent kinship care arrangements
Coram Children's Legal Centre
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Survey findings renew calls for better support for kinship carers, who often struggle to access help to address children's needs.
There are estimated to be around 200,000 children living with kinship carers in the UK. Just over half are grandparents but there are many others including older brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends. Based on the largest survey ever of kinship carers in the UK (1,139 respondents), the charity Grandparents Plus recently published the report Kinship Care: State of the Nation 2018, highlighting the struggles many carers face. It found that more than a third of kinship carers find it difficult to make ends meet and only 14 per cent of carers felt they get the support they need to bring up the child they care for - only 11 per cent said they get the emotional support they need. A quarter of carers said their physical health had worsened and more than half said that their mental health had deteriorated since becoming a kinship carer.
Types of care arrangements
Kinship care, or family and friends care, is an arrangement whereby a child who cannot be cared for by their parents or other person with parental responsibility, goes to live with a relative, friend or other connected person. This can be a private arrangement made directly between the parents and the relative, friend or connected person or it can arise through children's services involvement. A number of legal arrangements can be made to formalise kinship care placements, including special guardianship orders, child arrangements orders and family and friends foster care.
To become a family and friends foster carer, an individual will need to be recognised as a "connected person" and then assessed and approved by the local authority. A connected person is defined as a "relative, friend or other person connected with a child". The latter is likely to include persons who have a pre-existing relationship with the child, for example, a teacher who knows the child in a professional capacity. A relative, for the purposes of family and friends foster care, is defined in the Children Act 1989 as a "grandparent, brother, sister, uncle or aunt (whether full blood or half blood or by marriage or civil partnership) or step-parent".
Statutory guidance
Statutory guidance for local authorities on family and friends care aims to ensure that local authorities understand when such children should be looked after, and what local authorities should do to deliver effective services to children and young people living with family members or friends. It makes clear that "children and young people who are unable to live with their parents should receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare whether or not they are looked after". This guidance is in the process of being revised to better take into account the issues faced by asylum-seeking children who come to the UK to live with family or relatives under the Dublin III regulation.
Support for kinship carers
If the child is looked after by the local authority, a family and friends foster carer should be paid a full fostering allowance for the child, even if only temporarily approved as a foster carer. Children's services can also provide support such as respite care, facilitating contact with the child's parents and help with education costs. If a carer is caring for a child under a private arrangement they may be able to obtain financial support from the local authority under section 17 of the Children Act 1989.
The report raises concerns that the reality for kinship carers is that access to support continues to be determined by legal order, not the needs of children. Grandparents Plus is calling for permanent kinship care to have the same status as other permanence arrangements and for kinship carers to have access to an assessment of needs and ongoing support irrespective of their legal status or the local authority's involvement in the original arrangement.