Is this the beginning of official recognition?

“It’s hard being a special guardian, especially when, like so many others in this position, you are older. The constant concerns about your own health and longevity and the increasing demands on your body. It isn’t helped by the fact that this is a 24/7 undertaking with often little respite. In our case I think it is something like eight nights off in seven and a half years.

You worry about ensuring that you are doing the best for your charge, whilst trying to keep up with all the current trends and dealing with approaching teenage years. It’s not surprising that when nine thirty comes bed seems very appealing.

All of the above goes on constantly but there are other things that crop up that can be equally frustrating, time consuming and stress inducing. These occurrences are usually associated with interaction with government offices and departments, education, GPs, hospitals etc. The problem being the basic lack of understanding as to what special guardians and kinship carers are. It becomes exasperating when you have to repeat your story two or three times to different departments during one phone call.

The introduction of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act earlier this year will hopefully help to end this sorry state of affairs. Following years of hard work and the Family Rights Group’s brilliant Time to Define campaign a definition of Kinship Care was included in the Act. I’m hoping that this will lead to a better understanding of our situation by all bodies and might even lead to us having a box that we can tick on official forms.

Perhaps this really could be ‘The beginning of official recognition’.”