Honouring our kinship communities in Black History Month

Interviewer: As we mark both Kinship Care Week and Black History Month, two people connected by kinship care but separated by more than 40 years come together to share their experiences. Through their conversation, we explore an important question. What has changed in over 40 years of kinship care, if anything at all?

So let’s begin the introductions.

Beverley, would you introduce yourself?

Beverley: Hello, my name is Beverly Campbell and I am the Family Participation Officer at Family Rights Group.

I’m also a qualified solicitor who spent many years representing parents and family members in the area of kinship care.

I became a kinship child as soon as I was born because my parents were teenagers and my maternal grandparents said that they wanted me to have a secure life while my parents went off and did what was necessary to create their family.

And it’s been many, many years now. I’m now 65. And whilst my mother, my father and my grandfather have deceased, I am still the carer for my grandmother who is now 101.

Interviewer: Kyle, could you introduce yourself please?

Kyle: Hi, my name is Kyle Rogers. I am a peer mentor with Families in Harmony. I also grew up in kinship care from a very young age and now I am 21 and independent.

Interviewer: Thank you.

So I’m going to start with the first question. Beverley, do you have a significant memory that was negative as a kinship child?

Beverley: I always remember this one.

My family arrangement would today be classed as an informal arrangement because there were no court proceedings. It was a family decision and everybody agreed it was for the best for me. So it meant that at weekends I stayed with my parents and then later on my siblings. So there wasn’t a disconnect as far as the family were concerned.

So my negative memory was about school. When I was at school, I was constantly being asked by other children why it was that I called my mum Nan. Now remember she was 40 by the time I was born. So she was quite young looking and lots of children used to assume that because she was older than other people’s mothers, I was lying and she was my mum and not my nan. And that was really frustrating. It seems like a small thing, but to a five year old child, it is major.

Everybody wants to be the same.

So being picked out for your life circumstance when it isn’t a problem to your family or your life, can be very difficult and frustrating to understand. Thank you.

Interviewer: Same question for you Kyle. Was there a particular negative experience from childhood, from being a kinship child?

Kyle: Yeah, mine is based around school as well. Luckily the group of friends I had, they were very kind of welcoming and open.

They didn’t really ask me much questions, but it was more to do with the teachers. Teaching, coming up to say certain holidays and things and birthdays even, teachers would ask, oh, did your mum and dad get you anything or did you go away with your parents? Not really seeing the whole scope that I could be living with someone else. And that kind of that kind of embarrassed me because it was like, it’s being brought up again and I have to explain it again. And it was annoying and kind of tedious.

Interviewer: Thank you. Despite those experiences that you both mentioned, there’s plenty of evidence to show that outcomes for children raised in kinship care are better than for children raised in other forms of care.

Can you tell us about a positive thing that has come out of your experience as a kinship child? Can we start with you, Kyle?

Kyle: A positive thing would be the work I’m doing now, my mentoring. I’m a peer mentor. I started that about two years ago. I went on a course, I passed it and then I was working with Families in Harmony to to peer mentor a small group of young black boys.

Going into that, I was scared.

I didn’t know if I had basically the materials or the experience to be a mentor.

And the boys were going through a few issues at school, which were more to do with their family structure than behavior and the school didn’t really see that.

So when I stepped in and started mentoring these boys, there was a big change in their behavior and their work output, which really kind of reflected the work I was doing and just reflected on who they were, like the potential they had.

Another thing, I actually won an award for Frontline, which was amazing.

When I saw the e-mail saying that I had been nominated, I was shocked. And once I went to the venue and they announced my name, it was, it was great. It was like a relief. Like I didn’t know what I was doing was really being watched or really was being like scrutinized like that. And to see that people for the work I’d been doing deserved an award was an amazing feeling.

Interviewer: That is amazing, Kyle. That is fantastic.

Interviewer: What about you, Beverley?

Beverley: Can I just ask Kyle, what was the actual award for? Was it your work that you did with the boys, the mentoring?

Kyle: It was the work I did with the boys and also the work I did with Families in Harmony.

Beverley: Can I ask what for those who might not know it, what does Family in Harmonies do?

Kyle: Families in Harmony, they work with, they work with minority groups. So also Asian carers who care for kingship children.

Beverley: And so the award was because of the work you do with Family in Harmonies together with specifically for the mentoring. And you also, I believe, do some research work through Family in Harmonies.

Kyle: I do. I’m partnered with currently Cardiff University working with a lady called Lorna and our research is mainly to do with basically mixed heritage children living with one side of the family and kind of not getting the background of the other family.

So say a child from you could say they’re living with their Jamaican maternal parent, but they don’t really have the side, the Greek side, and it’s basically us finding out how the child feels, how it can impact them in their life.

Beverley: That sounds excellent and I’m sure that sort of investigation is needed but it also must be very nice when you’re talking to the young people to be a young person yourself because unfortunately lots of researchers could be older and these young people may not relate to them as easily as they relate to you, especially as you have kinship experience yourself.

Kyle: It is it’s kind of it’s kind of a honour to kind of being young and being in this field of work because and also having kinship experience because talking to the children it becomes easier it becomes like they can relate to me and my story so them opening up is easier than them opening up to say someone a therapist who has no kinship experience.

Beverley: Yes, thank you very much. I just wanted to learn a bit more for those that didn’t know your story as well as you do.

Interviewer: So Beverley, could you reflect on positive experiences and also on what we touched on earlier about more children in kinship care, I think doing better than children raised in other forms of care based on reflecting on your time working at Family Rights Group as well?

Beverley: Okay, as I said, I’ve always been a kinship child. I had grandparents that were older, but their focus was on me because by the time I came along, they were established, unlike young parents that are trying to make ends meet and might have conflicting issues with other siblings. I was the apple of their eye and I remember at the age of five, we had watched some sort of Perry Mason film and I said that I wanted to be a lawyer and my aunt was visiting and she said, oh, don’t be silly.

And my grandparents were highly offended and said, if she’s prepared to do the work, we’re prepared to back her every step of the way.

And so said, so done.

I was always told that if you’re committed and you want to do the work, we will support you. And so yes, I did become a qualified solicitor and have been one for over 2 1/2 decades.

When I was working with families, I knew lots of kinship families because I did lots of care cases and then applications for kinship orders.

And it was lovely for me to understand what the families were going through and what they were able to provide for the children. There was a connection. Children knew who they were. There wasn’t a case of having to be in foster care. And even though we’ve got hard working, decent foster carers, but they’re not your grandparents, or your older sister or your older brother and lots of the children didn’t see it as such a separation moving from their parents to their nan’s house. Even though there was early life trauma to be contended with, they felt safe in the people that they were there for.

And also from the parents’ point of view, many of my clients who were losing their children to kinship care still felt that it was important that their children remained in the family and with reasonable contact they could see them for Christmas and for special birthdays.

So the child did not lose their whole family, such as adoption or fostering. They knew they were always there. It’s just that they lived with their kinship carer and they visited their other people that were significant in their lives.

I have now been working for Family Rights Group as of two weeks ago for 18 years. I came originally as an advisor and then 14 years ago we decided that we were going to look into how we could have a closer relationship with the families that we advised through the advice line represented through our campaigning. And I like people.

I’m used to working with people and so I volunteered to take on this investigation later on the role of the family participation officer. I am pleased to say that 13 years on I facilitate 2 panels.

One is the parents panel and the other is the kinship carers panel and I have over 23 and 25 lived experience experts on both of those panels.

So I’m currently caring for just less than 50 of my panel members and it is a privilege. These people, some of them have been through the worst things in their lives and they are so generous of spirit and so committed to families that they would then turn around and say I want to volunteer to make things better and they work consistently to do so.

Kyle is the grandchild of a member of our kinship panel and we met through the work of the APPG. And it has been a privilege and a pleasure to watch him speak in Parliament and to show people that not only are kinship carers special people, but they grow their children in a way that they have appreciation for the campaigning and for the changes that Family Rights Group is committed to making, that he would give up his time, he would attend Parliament, he would come to meetings and go to events for us. And I think that is a real show of the dedication of him, his grandmother and other kinship carers at large.

And I was very honoured in 2025 when King Charles granted me an MBE for kinship.

The reason this was so special, yes, it took into consideration my years as solicitor and also the work with the panels, but also it was recognised about my care of my grandmother.

And this is something I’m committed to more than anything else.

I pride myself that this September was the anniversary of looking after her for 46 years.

Interviewer: That’s wonderful.

So it sounds like despite the difference in your ages, you both had quite some of the more negative experiences that you had were at school.

Do you have hopes for more positive experiences for children growing up in kinship care in school now and in the future?

Kyle: Yes, I do have hopes.

I was talking to a lovely group of children from Liverpool at the APPG and we was talking about our school experiences and I kind of realised even though I went to school about six years ago, the issues are still the same.

And we are hoping that these talks that we’re doing, the conversations we are having, even if they make a ripple, hopefully that will lead to a change.

Interviewer: Fantastic.

Beverley, do you have anything to add?

Beverley: I was really pleased because at the APPG, as Kyle said, he spoke so well, as did the children from Liverpool Kinship Care and they all said the same thing, different experiences and it was about school and it really resonated with me, even though for my experience it was over 50 years ago.

But the wonderful thing was the National Kinship Care Ambassador, Jahnine
Davis was also present and she was able to inform the APPG about work being undertaken by the Department for Education in relation to how kinship care is recorded through the school census.

The APPG reinforced this recommendation in a letter to the minister in December 2025 and we were delighted that the government confirmed in January of this year that kinship care will be added to the school census.

So it’s going to be acknowledged that children are in kinship care arrangements and therefore this should reduce a lot of the isolation and embarrassment that young children have been made to feel by constantly having to explain themselves and their very existence by the people that teach them and support them throughout their school life.

Interviewer: Thank you. So it’s Black History Month. And Kyle, as a young black man, can you tell us about your experience of growing up in kinship care and what help and support you think other young black boys in kinship care will need in the future or could benefit from?

Kyle: I think that black boys in kinship care need to see that professionals acknowledge their additional struggles on top of all the other racial profiling we experience. Teachers and school staff need specific training to help them and see and remove some of these racial biases that limit black boys from achieving their full educational potential.

I am glad that Families in Harmony has given me the opportunity to use my kinship care experience to support these boys. I have been able to work towards a mentoring qualification and I enjoy mentoring and giving back in this way. My internship comes to an end in December, but I hope that funding to make this opportunity available to another young person is possible and that the boys I have mentored will pay it forward in their own unique way someday.

Interviewer: Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s been really interesting to hear everything you’ve had to say, but I thought it would be useful to go back and to revisit that first question we asked at the beginning.

What has changed in over 40 years of kinship care, if anything at all? What do you think? What do you think, Beverley?

Beverley: Well, I’m really pleased because of organisations such as Family Rights and the campaigning that we’ve done with kinship carers right across the country that the government is listening. We now have the Children, Wellbeing and Schools Act of 2026 and for the first time kinship care has made it into legislation. This means that it will take away some of the unawareness of what’s going on, what should be happening and hopefully kinship carers will be treated more fairly.

The one thing that I think is even more positive than the government listening is all of these kinship families that have dropped whatever their plans were and changed their lives completely to welcome a friend or family’s young child into their care. These people’s commitment, love and care has never changed.

The change needed to be made outside and because of the work that we and other organisations are doing constantly, changes are being made. So yes, it’s great about the law changing, but to me as a kinship child, I’m glad that certain things have stayed the same and that’s the love and the commitment of kinship carers.

Interviewer: That’s lovely.

What about you, Kyle?

Kyle: Personally, I think that from speaking to carers and people who have been through kinship care, the acknowledgement of kinship care itself has had a massive change.

Also the certain funding aspects like before I know that funding was kind of hard to come by.

It still is hard to come by but there’s a change.

It’s little by little it’s getting better and I think that is great.

Interviewer: Thank you both very much.