By phone or email
To speak to an adviser, please call our free and confidential advice line 0808 801 0366 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 3pm, excluding Bank Holidays). Or you can ask us a question via email using our advice enquiry form.
Kinship Care
It is estimated that 180,000 children in the United Kingdom who cannot live with their parents are being brought up by grandparents, older siblings or other wider family members or friends. These family and friends carers are also known as kinship carers.
Kinship carers may be raising the children under various legal arrangements including:
- Kinship foster care, where children become formally looked after in the care system but live with their kinship carer
- Children who are subject to a special guardianship order, child arrangements order or residence order and
- Children living in an informal arrangements which do not involve the Family Court making a court order and may involve limited, if any, contact with children’s services. This includes private family arrangements and private fostering arrangements.
Facts about kinship care:
- Children raised by kinship carers feel loved and secure and report high levels of satisfaction
- Kinship care placements offer more stability than placements with carers with whom the child has no prior relationship (‘unrelated care’)
- Kinship carers show a high level of commitment
- Children in kinship care have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system but they and their carers receive much less support
- Many kinship carers live in impoverished circumstances, and this impacts on the children.
If you are searching for advice in relation to kinship care, see our range of advice resources here.
3 out 4
of kinship carers experience severe financial hardship
42%
of kinship carers had to give up work permanently to raise the children
8 out 10
people agree that kinship carers should receive financial support
Many
kinship carers face crippling legal costs to secure the child’s future
Our funding means we can currently only help 4 in 10 people
Your donation will help more families access expert legal advice and support from Family Rights Group.
Donate Now