Kinship Care Strategy

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to the fantastic work of many campaigners on this issue, several of whom are in the Public Gallery today. It is thanks to their hard work and their tireless commitment to the cause that we even have a kinship care strategy, published just before Christmas.

The publication of that strategy was a real milestone. It has finally put kinship on the map—an achievement for which I pay tribute to the campaigners. However, that strategy was a real missed opportunity and fell far short of the ambition that the Minister himself set out in his response to my debate in this Chamber back in September. Indeed, while much of the text of the strategy set out the challenges, I am afraid that many of the solutions fell far short of addressing them.

First, on allowances, the Minister said back in September that

“kinship carers need more support than is currently available to them.”

He pointed out that there is no “great logic” to foster carers’ allowances not being on a par with kinship carers, and he recognised

“the strain that many kinship families are under.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 425WH.]

But only eight local authorities are going to be part of the pilot, and even in those local authorities it will be a tiny subset of kinship carers. We have a perverse situation in which only families of previously looked-after children will be able to claim an allowance, yet it is local authorities that, in trying to save money, go to families to prevent children from going into care in the first place.

In the September debate, even the Minister recognised that it is much more cost-effective for local authorities to put children into kinship care rather than local authority care. The savings are very realisable. in the short term as well as in the long term. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) talked about long-term savings, but about £35,000 per child can be saved by putting children into kinship care rather than local authority care. If the Minister is going to stick to just eight local authority pilots, I beg him to at least look at expanding the eligibility criteria.

Many hon. Members have already talked about the lack of movement on employment support and the lack of a commitment to statutory pay or leave, which are hugely disappointing. Kim, the constituent who first brought my attention to the issue of kinship care, had to reduce her hours significantly. So many people do. They are typically women, because kinship carers are often grandmothers, who are already suffering the gender pay gap and losing out. That is a key barrier that must be removed.

There are so many things that I do not have the time to say. In September, the Minister said that he was determined to do as much as he could. He needs to go back to the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade and ask for more, because the strategy is just scraps. Kinship carers deserve an awful lot more.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

We have not announced the local authorities, so let us do that bit first. Members asked why we are starting with the particular subset of children who have special guardianship orders; they are one of the easiest groups to define, they often have the highest need and they are the quickest for local authorities to make the payments to. We want to get the programme going as quickly as possible, but subject to its success we want to broaden it to the full range of people in kinship care and to the other local authorities. However, we have not chosen the eight yet.

On virtual school heads, while some children in kinship arrangements have already been able to benefit from education entitlements and support, one of the constant conversations I have with kinship carers is that at times they find it very difficult to get the school to engage with them. Even though they are acting as the parent, they do not get the same conversations and treatment that a parent would get. That is why we announced £3.8 million to expand the role of virtual school heads to children in kinship care. All children in kinship care arrangements will get that, regardless of their status. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) raised that point and mentioned making sure everybody is aware that the heads are there. The local authority grant letters are being published imminently, delivery will start in September and we will do all we can to make sure everybody knows that they exist.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and others mentioned kinship leave, and we recognise the challenge many kinship carers face when continuing to work alongside the pressures of taking in and raising a child at an unexpected moment. We continue to explore what we can do. We have published guidance for employers, as some hon. Members have mentioned, to better support kinship carers in work. Some employers are already doing that. The Department for Education will give kinship leave to its staff who are kinship carers and we expect other Government Departments to do similarly in the coming weeks and months.

On training and support, which was raised by the hon. Members for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) as well as others, we announced a £1.6 million extension to our peer support funding, which will be delivered from July. It will mean that all kinship carers, regardless of their care order, will be able to network and learn from each other until the end of March 2026. Following the progress and positive impact that the peer-to-peer support contract has already made, we have committed to delivering a package of training and support that all kinship carers across England can access. We were pleased to confirm that the charity Kinship will be the training partner and that training is on track to be delivered from spring 2024.

We know that many kinship carers feel that a clear definition of kinship care will help to reduce barriers to them accessing services and support, creating a common understanding of what kinship care means. We are proud to have published the first Government definition of a kinship carer. This year, we will implement that in statutory guidance to improve understanding and awareness from practitioners about what kinship care is.

On a related matter raised by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, we have asked the Law Commission to review and simplify the framework for kinship care status. On the point made by him and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about inconsistent support from local authorities, we are publishing an updated version of the family and friends guidance this spring, and we will be monitoring compliance. I had a conversation with the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish at his APPG about the fact that we have found local authorities not paying the minimum fostering allowance, which we give them the money to do. Local authority compliance is very much in my sights.

This year, we will recruit the first-ever national kinship care ambassador to advocate for kinship carers and work directly with local authorities to improve services. That should go live for recruitment this month, and I look forward to working with the appointed candidate. They will help us to ensure that local authorities provide a consistent service that complies with what we require them to do. We are creating a board of sector experts, in addition to our kinship carer reference group, to advise me on priorities for future funding and policy development.

Let me quickly respond to some of the other points that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked about family group conferencing and New Zealand. We are exploring using legislation to mandate the use of family group conferencing at pre-proceedings and my predecessor met colleagues from New Zealand to discuss how it works there. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) described what sounded like good local offers to support kinship carers in their areas, and I will ask officials to follow up with them to ensure that we are aware of the good work they are doing. I need to leave a couple of minutes for the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, so if there are any points I have not addressed, I am happy to write to hon. Members.

[Munira Wilson]

Would the Minister address the issue of the pupil premium plus and priority admissions for children in kinship care? We know that looked-after children get those benefits, but kinship children do not, and it was not in the strategy.

[David Johnston]

I will write to the hon. Lady about that because it is a longer answer than the 30 seconds I have before the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire winds up.

We are proud of the progress we are already making to support kinship carers through the strategy, but we know there is more to do. I am fully committed to reducing the barriers to kinship care where it is in the best interests of the child to offer a safe, stable and loving alternative to becoming looked-after. I am determined that we keep the profile of kinship carers as high as possible and that people understand the vital role they play for the children in their care and the country as a whole.