Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will take steps to encourage local authorities to help children of separated parents maintain a relationship with their grandparents.

Statutory guidance states that local authorities should offer Family Group Conferences to families undergoing or about to undergo care proceedings, with many providing this service before the care proceedings stage. Family Group Conferences allow extended family members to offer their practical support to parents, in order to develop a family plan that meets the needs of and promotes the welfare of the children involved. Under such circumstances, these plans can enable grandparents to maintain a relationship with their grandchildren, where the parents are separated.

A key principle of the Children’s Act 1989 is that children are best looked after within their families. Under certain circumstances, grandparents can become kinship carers of children from separated parents that might otherwise have been taken into care, via informal family arrangements or through legal orders made by the court. In 2011, the department issued statutory guidance for local authorities about supporting kinship carers, explaining that there is no limit on the level of support, including financial support, that local authorities can provide them.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care published in May 2022 set out recommendations on how the department can further support kinship families. We are now considering these recommendations, including those to create a financial allowance, and will set out an ambitious and detailed response to the recommendations in the review in early 2023.