Research has shown that:
- Outcomes are positive for most children living in kinship care, and considerably better than for children in unrelated foster care, e.g. the children are more securely attached to their carers, feel that they belong with their carers, and are confident they will be staying.
- Children in kinship care have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system but they and their carers received much less support.
- Kinship carers show a high level of commitment but half of kinship carers have to give up work to take on the child. As a result many kinship care face financial hardship. This has worsened as a result of the Pandemic.
Research Reports
Family Rights Group has been undertaking research into kinship care for more than twenty years.
In 1999 the Family Policy Unit in the Home Office agreed to fund Family Rights Group’s proposal to conduct a national survey of grandparents raising their grandchildren. The resulting report by Alison Richards, entitled Second Time Around was published in 2001.
We have since undertaken research, conducted surveys and drawn up a number of practice guidance, resulting in more than twenty publications on kinship care.
Some of the more recent of these publications are listed below and can be downloaded for free or purchased online.