Kinship Carer Training

The services relate to the Department’s aim to procure a package of training, information, support and advice for kinship carers in England. This is in response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (Care Review) call on Government to deliver a training and information package of support for kinship carers and their families.

Kinship carers are relatives or friends who raise children who cannot safely remain with their parents. Across the UK more than 150,000 children are living with kinship carers – significantly more than are in the care system and many more than are adopted, making kinship care an important element of the children’s social care system.

These children have often suffered similar adversities to those in the care system. These include parental substance misuse or mental or physical incapacity, domestic violence, imprisonment, teenage parenthood, parental separation or death. Child protection concerns are common. At least 20% of children raised in kinship care are affected by some degree of emotional and behavioural difficulties1.

The charity Kinship’s 2022 annual survey “The Cost of Loving”2, found that the provision of local authority support and information for kinship carers is inadequate, risking significant costs for children, families, and the state. The survey found that 78% of carers felt they did not receive the support they needed from their local authority in order to meet the needs of their kinship child(ren), an eight-percentage point increase on last year’s survey. It also found that less than a third of carers received information about being a kinship carer before or shortly after the child moved in, and only 28% had been signposted to other places they could access support.

There is currently no national training and support offer for kinship carers, and what does exist is highly variable across different local authorities. Some organisations within the sector offer support, however none of that support is funded by the government. Some kinship carers attend foster carer training; however, the training isn’t tailored to their specific needs (e.g. managing contact with a birth parent is different for a foster carer vs. a kinship carer).