Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the potential cost of providing kinship carers with a non-means tested allowance at the same rate as foster carers who look after a child in care.

The recently published Independent Review of Children’s Social Care set out recommendations on how the government can better support kinship families. The department is currently considering how we can take these recommendations forward, including the recommendations to create an allowance and a new entitlement to kinship leave for all special guardians and kinship carers with a Child Arrangements Order in place.

The department is rapidly working up an ambitious and comprehensive implementation strategy in response to the recommendations in the Review, which will be announced in due course.