Kinship foster care ‘not explored as an option’ for most children, research warns
Fiona Simpson
Monday, April 29, 2024
Kinship foster care – where a child is fostered by a family friend or relative – is “too infrequently explored” across England and Wales as an option for children in care, new government data suggests.
Just 15% of the 83,840 children currently in the care system in England are being raised by kinship foster carers, rising to 23% of 7,210 children in Wales.
Despite rising numbers of children in the care system, the number in kinship foster care in England has remained steadily below 13,000 in the last three years, the research by Family Rights Group and the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kinship Care finds.
The groups have compared local authority level data to the wider population of children in the care system and international examples.
They note that there is significant variation between regions, from 19% in the North East to 10% in East of England.
Among individual councils, just 2% of kinship foster care arrangements were reported in Hounslow and 6% in Peterborough compared with 27% in Leeds and 31% in York.
More than a third of councils do not have an up-to-date kinship care policy, researchers add.
Family Rights Group is calling for urgent action through a Children’s Bill “to ensure exploring family first is hard wired into the system, backed up by the investment required to make it happen”.
Stable Homes Built on Love, the government’s response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, lays out plans to increase focus on kinship care.
The Department for Education has named the seven local authorities which will pilot its Families First for Children Pathfinder based around this focus.
Cathy Ashley, Family Rights Group chief executive, said: “Our analysis shows that too few children in care are being supported to remain safely in their family, when they cannot remain at home.
“The Independent Children’s Social Care Review called for a system shift towards family led solutions. So far, the government’s pathfinders are limited to a handful of local authorities. All children should have the right to be raised within their family, where it is safe. Their chance to do so shouldn’t depend on which part of the country they are born.”
Family Rights Group is also calling for every local authority should have an accessible, up to date local kinship care policy and offer for kinship families and for kinship care to be clearly defined in law.
