Kinship Care Strategy

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the kinship care strategy.

I could not be happier or more privileged to move this motion. There are so many campaigns that I am lucky enough to work with as an MP, but since well before I was elected one group has been a constant source of inspiration for me. From the number of colleagues in Westminster Hall today, it looks like I am far from alone in being touched by the story of kinship carers across the country.

From the very start of my by-election campaign, which colleagues may remember was rather longer than expected, kinship carers were meeting with me to set out their concerns locally, and none more so than Carol and Amanda. They sat me down and talked to me about the battles they face, and how through their love and commitment to the young people in their care they had been able to fight and ensure that they could do everything to give their young charges the best possible start in life. I could not help but be inspired by those stories and their determination, and feel the need to do right by them to ensure that they have everything they need to take care of the young people they look after.

Carol and Amanda’s love and commitment was matched only by their tenacity. I found that out four days after being sworn in as an MP when, at my first constituency surgery, first through the door yet again were Carol and Amanda, asking me what I had done so far for kinship carers and how I would be championing the cause going forward. The truth is that I could not be happier to be held to account on this important issue, because it matters so much. Although I am afraid I have not quite been able to get Carol and Amanda their meeting with the Prime Minister yet—not through lack of trying—I hope that today marks the start of a continuing commitment from me to champion the issue of kinship care in Parliament and to ensure that we make progress in some of the important areas they have highlighted to me.

In the run-up to the debate, I have been truly moved by the number of kinship carers who have taken the time to write to me; I know that colleagues across the Chamber have been too. Indeed, Kinship told me that in the last week alone nearly 300 kinship carers from right across the country have written in to share their own personal, difficult and important testimonies. The fact that they have done so underlines why we are all here today.

At its heart, kinship care is all about supporting a young person who may have been through a really traumatic and difficult moment in life—far more traumatic and difficult than many of us would ever have to go through ourselves. Making sure that that young person and the people in their wider family unit have everything they need should be a matter of great importance to all of us. They step up to take on caring responsibilities at a really important time—a time of real trauma and need.

It could be a situation like that of Karen, who emailed me to tell me about the moment she had to take care of her grandson, when he arrived at the start of lockdown with only the clothes on his back after his father had cut off all communication. Angela wrote to tell me about the challenges she faced in carrying out her caring responsibilities to her grandson while his parents were battling through addiction. Those stories are all unique and important, but they share one fundamental truth: at a time of need, kinship carers across the country step up to provide love and care for a young family member at a really difficult time. They take on responsibilities, often at incredibly short notice, that they have not planned or saved for.

I fear that in the time available, and to ensure that as many colleagues as possible can speak, I will not possibly be able to do justice to the wide range of emails and stories that I have received. I hope, however, to be able to underline the passion and the urgency of their love and care, and highlight some of the clear areas where we can all work together to go further, faster for kinship carers in this country.

As a former councillor with responsibility for children’s social care, I got to see at first hand the moving and important work done by kinship carers to take on caring responsibilities and ensure that their young person could stay with a sense of place, with family and with familiar faces through difficult moments. It was as clear to me then as it is now that, where possible, kinship care provides an amazing and powerful way of ensuring that the traumatic moments in some young people’s lives have as little impact as possible on their development. It ensures that a young person’s true interests, and their need to stay with family and with a sense of identity and place, can be protected and supported.

It is no wonder that the independent review of children’s social care found that where young people across the country had been placed with kinship carers the outcomes were often far better. Those outcomes alone should be more than enough to justify the support that kinship carers need and are asking for. But if they are not enough to spur action, we should be clear: failing to support and maintain every viable kinship care relationship means propping up a broken and expensive care system that currently is all too often letting children down.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The north-east, where my constituency is, has the highest proportion of kinship care households in England, and many of my constituents have been in touch with me about the difficulties they face. Many children raised in kinship care have experienced loss and trauma; does my hon. Friend agree that we need to do more to support those children and provide spaces for them to socialise with peers?

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She highlighted a really important point, on which I would be keen to hear from the Minister in his response, about how we can all work together to make sure that support is put in place and that opportunities are provided for young people right across the country.

To return to what I was saying, in looking through the outcomes the independent review of children’s social care rightly found that despite the amazing work and commitment of kinship carers, we need to do far more as a country, and we need our Government to do far more to ensure that wherever kinship carers are taking on responsibilities, and wherever possible kinship placement exists, everything is done to support, nourish and champion those situations.

The children’s social care review set out a number of areas in which we could be going further. It was welcome to see some of the review’s recommendations being taken forward in the Government’s own strategy, announced in December last year. I thank the Minister for that, and look forward hopefully to hearing more about the Government’s action on those recommendations, and on further areas. Sadly, as welcome as some of the measures were, I have spoken to kinship carers and advocacy groups and it feels like they fell far short of the comprehensive support and recognition that those groups need to ensure that many significant recommendations from the review can finally be enacted in full.

I am sure there are lots of aspects that colleagues across the Chamber will want to focus on, so I will touch on just three, the first of which is the need for a clear and consistent local authority offer. One thing that came through loud and clear in the testimony is the postcode lottery that kinship carers currently face throughout the country in terms of the support on offer from their local authority. Amanda in my consistency faces a real battle. She potentially faces a cliff edge in support when she moves between local authorities and is rightly concerned about what that might mean for her and her granddaughter.

I declare my interest as chairman of the quality and safeguarding board of the National Fostering Group. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on a really important subject, concerning a really undervalued cohort of people in society. I want to add a fourth point to his list. All the points about practical support are absolutely valid, but what kinship carers also need is legal clarification as to their status, and how that fits in with special guardianship orders, family fostering and so on. In the absence of primary legislation, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it needs to be made really clear what the options are to kinship carers who want to step up and do that really important job? Does he agree that they should have the full backing of the law, and the status, in place of the parents, to do that job?

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. I hope the Minister might be able to shed some light today on whether the Government will bring forward, with haste and urgency, some of the primary legislation needed to give that formal legal definition, clarification and certainty to kinship carers throughout the country, who often find themselves in a very uncertain place in the bureaucratic and legalistic care framework that currently exists.

On financial support, Stuart, a kinship carer of two children, powerfully highlighted to me the fact that over and over again, whichever report or study one looks at, the economic case for kinship care is overwhelming. It is clear and is the right thing to do for the young people involved. Given the wealth of evidence already available, if we are to have pilots, how will they be delivered in a manner that ensures that a national roll-out can follow as quickly as possible? If the Government are looking for partner councils to help to support this effort, I am sure that some of our Bedfordshire ones would be keen to bite off the Minister’s hand.

We should also consider whether, by limiting the scope to children who have already been in the care system, the pilots risk reinforcing some of the factors that currently push children into the system that the strategy seeks to avoid the excessive use of. The measures required are not just important, but urgent. As is repeatedly raised with me, the young people in the care of kinship carers deserve help and support, not years down the line but now, when it can still make a difference for their families and, crucially, for the young person they are doing everything they can to support.

Every day that the kinship carer lacks a minimum standard of support from their local authority is a day their young person may not be receiving every bit of support they need to get the best start in life. Every month that the kinship carer takes on responsibilities without care or parental leave is a month when some of those precious early moments in a young person’s life may be forever missed. Every time that a potential kinship carer is unable to take on caring responsibilities because of financial barriers is a moment when a better outcome for that young person, who has suffered real trauma, may forever be lost. Every day that we do not provide support to our fantastic kinship carers is a day we are letting down young people right across the country.

Before I call Ben Everitt, I say to colleagues that, as this debate is oversubscribed, there will be a time limit of three minutes, which might be shortened later in the debate.

I am not sure what I have done to deserve to be called first; I may have been promoted accidentally. Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is appreciated, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), for securing this debate on the Government’s new strategy for kinship care. He beat me to it, because I have been trying to get a debate, but it is a pleasure to give a three-minute speech as opposed to a 15-minute one, so I am grateful.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the brilliant kinship carers in Milton Keynes North. The strategy represents a huge step forward for ensuring that incredible kinship carers throughout the country receive the financial support that they need and deserve, as well as in education, through the expansion of virtual school heads, and better advice for local authorities in schools.

I welcome the Government’s strategy that will deliver for all kinship carers across England a package of training and support that they will be able to access from this spring. We are making progress, heading in the right direction and engaging with kinship carers, although there is always room for improvement. I am feeling the heat that my constituency neighbour described.

My local kinship carers are incredibly vocal, coming forward about things we can do and fine-tuning tweaks to do things better. It was clarified to me that training and information will be accessible via a supplier website, but there are still gaps to be addressed. Specifically, will there be information about where to find and how to obtain support from the virtual school heads? If so, in what form will it be made available? My constituents have also made it clear that that information needs to be integrated at the council level, so that those with special guardianship orders are better able to access support. We are talking about a better quality of life for children and the incredible sacrifices that kinship carers make every day, and nobody should fall through the net.

Continuing on the theme of education, I am aware that there has been no extension of eligibility for pupil premium plus—which schools receive to support children in care—to children under SGOs or child arrangement orders. Without such resources, extra help in schools might not reach a consistent level across the board and the strategy may not fulfil its stated aims.

Ultimately, it is in our interests to make the strategy work in the most effective way possible for our kinship carers, schools and local authorities. The upshot is that we need deeper integration between those three elements to deliver the best possible outcomes for children and their families. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I thank you, Mr Pritchard, and I thank kinship carers for their amazing work, love and sacrifice.

Before I call Kevan Jones, I remind colleagues that there is a clock, which will help them to stick to three minutes.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this debate. I first became involved with kinship carers 15 years ago through a tragic case in my constituency of a young woman who was kicked to death in front of her two children, who were then left with no parent because the perpetrator was in jail. The grandparents stepped in, and that was my first experience of kinship carers. Since then, I have worked with them across County Durham along with the county council.

Kinship carers do not take on responsibility because they are looking for financial gain; they do it from love, but the state takes that for granted. While I accept the national strategy, in my opinion it is the wrong approach. We need a clear approach on the legal status, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) just said. When carers first find themselves with children, they are often left not knowing what to do and or what is the right approach. We need to integrate them into the benefits system so that benefits are paid automatically and we need to co-ordinate at a local level.

I congratulate Durham County Council, which has a great kinship carer unit that I have worked with for quite a few years. It provides not just practical, but financial support, but again that support is time-limited. One kinship carer turned up at county hall one day and left her kids there, because the two-year rule on their support was up.

I say to the Government that this is an investment in the future. If we get it right with these kids, they are less likely to get involved in the criminal justice system, be disruptive at school or go off the rails, because they have that bubble of care around them—usually a grandparent or sibling. If we have to look at it in monetary terms, investment early on will pay itself back. It will also allow grandparents to continue working. Some of them have had to give up work to look after individuals, and they often do not expect to be in that position at their age.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. The turnout in the Chamber reflects the importance that MPs across the House place on this issue.

I have some brilliant local kinship carers and I pay tribute to the work that Enza Smith has done over many years on behalf of kinship carers in Worcester. I also pay tribute to a constituent, Julie Rose, who came to see me recently to raise some of the issues and some of the concerns of the #ValueOurLove campaign.

I do not want to repeat points that other hon. Members have made, because they made them very well, but respite care is vital and I have to say that in my constituency at the moment I am concerned by cuts to respite care. I hope the additional £500 million for children’s and adult social care announced in the Budget might help local authorities to redress some of those cuts, but that issue is undoubtedly important.

I also think kinship carers need access to other forms of support—bereavement support, in many cases. Even when a parent has not actually died, children face separation issues, having moved away from their original parents and into the care of another family member. Support such as counselling, which is offered to foster families in many cases, also needs to be considered specifically for kinship carers.

Of course, I welcome the fact that we now have the first kinship care strategy and I very much welcome the pilots; indeed, I have asked for Worcestershire to be considered as one of the areas in which those pilots take place. However, given the scale of what we know kinship carers are doing for children, we should be going beyond pilots and looking to fund and support kinship care more systematically across the country. The returns from doing so are pretty obvious and pretty clear.

Regarding the outcomes, we have already heard that the Education Committee has begun an inquiry into children’s social care; I do not want to pre-empt the outcome of that inquiry, because we are in the early days of receiving evidence, but we have already heard about the much better outcomes for children in kinship care, in terms of life chances, long-term employment and life expectancy. We should celebrate all those outcomes and the contributions that families can make to them.

I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) wishes she could be here for this debate. On the Education Committee, she has already made the point about the need for kinship carers effectively to have parental leave and for a more systematic approach when people take on the responsibilities of kinship care, so that they can then have some time to spend with their new charges. We should make sure that businesses support that. The guidance mentioned in the kinship care strategy is a welcome first step in that direction. We will continue to work on this issue as part of our work on social care in the Select Committee. I look forward to hearing the evidence that kinship carers can bring to us, so that we can strengthen the evidence-based case for the Government to take further action.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on his eloquent opening speech and I thank him for his support on this important issue. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care, because I myself am a kinship carer. My wife Allison and I have the utter privilege of being the special guardians to our wonderful five-year-old grandson Lyle. Like many who find themselves as kinship carers, it was unexpected and unplanned; basically, the social services stork left a baby on our doorstep. Of course, around all the arguments that we could have about the structures and the legalities, the one thing that comes to the fore at a moment like that is love. Every kinship carer does it for love and only for love.

However, I have to say that special guardianship orders are far from a perfect device: you are often left to defend yourself in a legal maze, and if you are taken back to court for any reason, you are literally on your own. Had I known then what I know now, I would much sooner have remained as a temporary foster carer of my grandson, because at least then I would share legal responsibility—parental responsibility—with the local authority. Therefore, if I was taken back to court on a spurious argument, I would have the backing of the local authority rather than having to rely on myself. That is the predicament that far too many people find themselves in, so I would like special guardianship orders to be strengthened.

In addition, I want to get rid of the postcode lottery that, sadly, we now see in kinship services across the land. Some local authorities provide superb support for kinship carers, but some do not, and it cannot be right that where someone lives determines what support they can access. In theory, my wife and I can access support from the post-adoption fund. In practice, that is incredibly difficult because the social services computer says no. The last thing that I want to mention is parental leave, where I believe that, if the Government act, they can make a big difference. That is not just a matter for employers; it is a matter for this place, because when I effectively became a dad again five years ago, the House of Commons did not recognise that kinship parental leave was necessary.

I too want to congratulate my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), on bringing forward this very important debate, and I agree with every word said by other Members so far.

I will look briefly at New Zealand, because I understand that in New Zealand only 48 in every 10,000 children are in care, and of those 57% are in kinship care. In England, 71 in every 10,000 children are in care, and only 15% are in kinship care. I know my good friend the Minister cares deeply about this issue, so I ask him to look at New Zealand and whether there are lessons we could learn, particularly the use of family group conferences and the legal weight that those have in New Zealand. This is a wonderful country and we do a lot of things well, but we should always be humble enough to learn from other countries that may have something to teach us.

The constituents to whom I have spoken on this issue tell me that they want urgent and really accurate information. I spoke to one quite recently who did not know whether she was entitled to child tax credits. My reading of the House of Commons briefing note suggests that she is, but she did not know that and she had not been told that. I have recently been in contact with another constituent, a grandmother who had to come out of work to look after her grandson when her daughter very sadly died. She needs an urgent nursery place for her grandchild. Again, I have spoken to the specialists in the House of Commons Library about that this afternoon: my understanding is that she is entitled to that free nursery place for her grandchild and to the Government help towards it, but she has not been told that. I have sent her the Library briefing note and I will do everything I can to help, but to me that highlights an urgent information gap.

My constituents have also told me that they are concerned about the cost and the uncertainty of getting a special guardianship order—and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who has just spoken very eloquently, told us that in any case that is not a panacea. That is a worry, because the first thing social services has said to some of my constituents is that they need a care order. If they are worried because it is expensive and involves lawyers, or because they have never been to court before, or do not know how it is it all going to work out, care is needed now.