Kinship Carers: Statutory Paid Employment Leave

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is right that this is a real opportunity—a pivotal moment, really—for the Government to put right a long-standing inequity in provision for different family arrangements. I look forward to the Minister setting out in more detail how far the Government have got with looking at that review, and when we can hope to see an outcome.

Once a decision is made by the carer, children can arrive with little more than the clothes they are wearing. Carers may have no knowledge of their medical or dietary needs. Suddenly, they find themselves navigating school arrangements. It could be a grandmother navigating school arrangements, when the difference in systems is vast, and coping with new appointments and the needs of a traumatised child, often with little practical support.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument and is a powerful advocate for kinship carers and the children they care for. When the Education Committee took evidence on this issue during our special educational needs and disabilities inquiry, Kinship stated that 47% of all children in kinship care have some sort of special educational need. That underlines that we should be giving kinship carers statutory paid leave so that they can meet the child’s complex needs.

[Melanie Onn]

I was not aware that the Education Committee did that inquiry. It goes very well with an inquiry that the APPG on kinship care did recently on the SEND needs of children in kinship care. Across Parliament, Members who have connections with kinship care communities recognise that children often arrive with additional needs, and that families often have no experience of managing or dealing with that. If a person in work, regardless of what their job is, is suddenly expected to provide for the needs of a child—it could be a physical need, or a mental, emotional or cognitive need—they have to figure it out, and in this day and age we should not expect them to take unpaid leave to navigate their way through that. They are stepping forward to provide safety and stability—the same level of care that we expect foster carers to provide. If the state provides foster care for a child in need, we make available all the necessary support, including the right to paid leave, but kinship carers are not currently entitled to that.