Kinship Carers

Alistair Strathern will move the motion and then the Minister will respond. I remind colleagues that, as is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will be no opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for kinship carers.

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Minister to her place. It is a real pleasure to see her in this role. Not only does she bring experience as someone who has worked in children’s social care, but her compassion and drive to improve situations for young people right across the country will be a powerful motivator to ensure that we deliver the change we have committed to as a Government, and will benefit of kinship carers in my constituency and right across the country over the coming years.

I am delighted to introduce my second debate on kinship care, having held one in the immediate aftermath of the last Government strategy earlier this year. As MPs, we get to meet, I think it is fair to say, quite a wide range of campaigners, all of whom are very powerful. I have to say that some are more convincing than others, but there can be no group more powerful or moving to work with than kinship carers. I was privileged, before I was even an MP, to be grabbed by Carol and Amanda, two kinship carers in the then constituency, to talk through some of the challenges they were facing. It was impossible not to be moved by their determination to do right by the young people in their care and young people in kinship care right across the country, so we stepped forward and agreed to work together.

I was soon to find that kinship carers are, rightly, an incredibly tenacious group of campaigners. One week after I was elected, Carol and Amanda pitched up at my surgery to ask what I had managed to do so far, and what I would be doing in the next week, to take their cause forward. It should have come as no surprise, then, that one month after my re-election—albeit in a slightly different constituency—they were beating down my door again. They did so because this is a cause that matters. Kinship carers do amazing work on behalf of the young people in their care right across the country. They step up at a moment of real trauma for a young person and ensure, through love, compassion and dedication, that everything possible is done to give that young person the stability, the common identity and the compassion they need to thrive.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, who is equally tenacious, and so is everyone else in this room. Last year in Northern Ireland, there were 3,801 children in care. We welcomed the boost for foster carers earlier this year, but we did not see a boost for kinship carers. Does he agree that there must be more financial provision for kinship caring across all of this great United Kingdom?

I thank the hon. Member for making incredibly poignant remarks, as he always does in these debates. I think I have yet to attend a debate here where he has not brought something to the table, and I could not agree more that we need to be thinking about the breadth of support that kinship carers get. I hope to touch on some of those points later in my remarks.

As a former councillor and lead for children’s services, I was also privileged to work closely with kinship carers and see at first hand the impact they could have in transforming the outcomes of the young people in their care. They were making sure, in those difficult moments, that the young people had the stability of place, the familiar face and the retention of their identity needed in order to be as resilient as possible in the face of more traumatic circumstances than many of us will ever have to comprehend or grapple with personally. It came as no surprise, then, that the independent review of children’s social care a few years ago remarked clearly that kinship carers deliver far better outcomes than many other parts of the care sector, but are often underserved by a care network that just is not set up to fully consider them, fully recognise their needs and fully embrace the role they can play in supporting young people through that really difficult moment.

Does my hon. Friend agree that kinship carers like David and Pamela in my constituency not only should have equal access to vital financial allowances, but should get the training and support they need when they take on this vital role?

I thank my hon. Friend for that powerful intervention. It highlights the breadth of support we need to be considering for kinship carers—not just the pilots that have already been announced, but some of the wider training and therapeutic support needed to ensure that they are equipped to support the young people they are taking on caring responsibilities for.

This debate comes at a critical time for kinship carers across the country. They are finally having their voice heard, and we as parliamentarians owe it to them to live up to the commitments we have made over the last few years. It was fantastic at a recent reception to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education listening so attentively to one of the kinship carers, Poppy, talking through some of the challenges she faces and what she would like to change so that kinship carers and those in kinship care across the country are finally fully supported by the Government and their local authorities.

I compliment my hon. Friend on securing this debate and being a champion for kinship carers, not just in this Parliament but previously. Does he recognise that the situation for kinship families is urgent and that the inaction that we saw from the previous Government means that many kinship carers are unable to continue? If they could not continue, it would push more children back into an already overstretched care system. Does he agree that though the 10 pilots are welcome, the best way to support families would be a non-means-tested mandatory allowance for all kinship families?

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful intervention. It is important to recognise the urgency. We have inherited a situation in which one in eight kinship carers are worried that they might not be able to carry on their caring responsibility, while thousands of other young people across the country could be placed into productive, meaningful and nourishing kinship care placements but are currently denied that by our antiquated children’s social care system.

As has just been mentioned, many kinship carers are on the breadline. They are not managing. Is it not right that instead of just patting them on the back and putting our arm around them, we should ensure that they receive adequate allowances to give the children they are looking after the best chance in life?

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful point. He rightly highlights that financial support is a crucial part of the package that kinship carers need. I am really excited that the Government are finally bringing forward the £44 million needed to get on with the pilots. However, it is important that we do not just put an arm around kinship carers, but provide a wider range of therapeutic support and advice. Both financial and non-financial support will be crucial.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the £44 million and the 10 pilots are a groundbreaking initiative on the part of this Government—something that kinship care families have long awaited and campaigned for? This is just the start, but we cannot have everything that we might want right now.

Absolutely. Since they took office, we have seen from the new Secretary of State, the Minister and the Government an urgency that, finally, is starting to meet the needs of the moment, and the needs of young people in kinship care and their carers. Whether it is making sure that we finally have a kinship care ambassador to actively champion the role of kinship carers and take to task local authorities that do not always provide the support they need, as some kinship carers in the room might be able to attest to; bringing forward statutory guidance and a framework to ensure that we have more in place to recognise the values of wider family networks in planning decisions for young people, and to do everything we can to remove the barriers to placing young people in kinship care; or—

As the previous Member for Mid Bedfordshire, the hon. Member knows how profoundly important this issue is to constituents like Amanda and Carol, who are tenacious. Does he agree that it is important to make sure that there is not a postcode lottery between local authorities and that there is equality of service across borders?

Absolutely. The new kinship care ambassador and the guidance for local authorities that was brought out earlier this year will be important in delivering that, as will making sure that local authorities are held to account for delivering the local offer for kinship carers. This is an incredibly important issue, and whether a kinship carer and a young person get the support they need cannot be left to the luck of a postcode.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I will give way to both my hon. Friends, then I will have to make some progress.