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Are you a parent, kinship carer relative or friend of a child who is involved with, or who needs the help of, children’s services in England? We can help you understand processes and options when social workers or courts are making decisions about your child’s welfare.
Our advice service is free, independent and confidential.
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.
Our online advice forums are an anonymous space where parents and kinship carers (also known as family and friends carers) can get legal and practical advice, build a support network and learn from other people’s experiences.
Our get help and advice section has template letters, advice sheets and resources about legal and social care processes. On Monday and Wednesday afternoons, you can use our webchat service to chat online to an adviser.
Family Rights Group, the national child welfare charity, is celebrating a commitment from Government to strengthen requirements for local authorities to set out the support they provide locally to children, who cannot live at home, and the relatives and friends who have stepped in as their kinship carers.
The charity welcomes this as an important milestone in its campaigning for a local offer for kinship families to be set out in legislation. This is key to kinship carers understanding what support is available for them and their children.
There are more than 153,000 children across England raised in kinship care. By stepping in, their carers ensure the children can remain safely in their family, with people who know and love them, instead of living with strangers in the care system. Yet too often kinship care is undervalued and under supported.
Research by Family Rights Group has shown that over a third of local authorities do not have an up to date and accessible local kinship care policy – something current guidance requires they have. Without it, families struggle to understand what support is available in their area and how they can access it.
The charity’s Act for Kinship Care campaign is calling for legislative action in the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to build the foundations of an effective kinship care support system. That includes an inclusive definition of kinship care in all its forms and a new duty on local authorities to develop and publish a local offer, developed with families. Alongside investment in the practical, emotional and financial support children and families need.
Writing in the Mirror newspaper for Kinship Care Week, Children’s Minister Janet Daby MP confirmed the Government will bring forward new statutory guidance:
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“Kinship carers step up amid tragedy and trauma to provide children with a safe and loving home. In doing so they keep children safely in their family instead of with strangers in the care system, delivering better outcomes for children and saving the state millions.
“However, our research and experience from our specialist national advice service, shows that too often, family and friends are overlooked when a child cannot remain with their parents. And where the child is raised in kinship care, for example because their grandparents have stepped in, the state does not step up to provide the support those children and carers need.
“This commitment to a local offer for kinship families is a crucial step forward, in response to Family Rights Group’s campaign. We welcome the Minister’s personal determination to build a system which thinks family first. But we need the Government to go further. With the local offer set out in the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, part of a wider package of legislative reforms, alongside adequate investment, to enable all children to thrive.
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