26/10/2026
I welcome the recognition that every child deserves a safe, stable and loving home, and I absolutely agree that adoption, fostering and kinship care all have an important role to play.
However, kinship care deserves far more than recognition. It deserves meaningful investment, proper support and equal consideration in government policy.
Every day, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and family friends step forward, often overnight and without warning, to protect children who can no longer safely remain with their parents.
These families don't go through a recruitment campaign. They don't spend months preparing to become carers. They simply respond to a child in crisis, often turning their own lives upside down to ensure that child remains safe, loved and connected to their family.
Many give up employment, sacrifice their financial security, struggle with their own health and wellbeing, and take on the responsibility of raising children who have experienced significant trauma, loss and adversity.
Kinship carers are not simply providing a home. They are preserving children's identities, relationships, family histories and sense of belonging.
They are also preventing children from entering an already overstretched care system, saving the public purse considerable sums of money. Yet many receive nowhere near the financial, practical or therapeutic support available through other care arrangements.
As someone who is both a kinship carer and works every day supporting kinship families through More Than Grandparents, I see the extraordinary commitment these families make. I also see the devastating consequences when they are left to manage without adequate support.
We rightly celebrate investment in fostering and adoption, but we must ask why kinship care continues to struggle for the same level of recognition and resources.
If the Government can commit £88 million to increasing foster care capacity, surely it can also make a meaningful commitment to supporting the families who are already preventing children from needing those placements in the first place?
Investment in kinship care is not simply about supporting carers. It is about improving children's outcomes, protecting family relationships, reducing childhood trauma and preventing future demands on public services.
We need consistent financial allowances, access to therapeutic support, specialist advice, respite provision and sustainable investment in community organisations that support kinship families long after the initial crisis has passed.
Kinship care should not be the forgotten part of the children's social care system.
Every child deserves somewhere to belong. For thousands of children, that place already exists within their own family. Surely our priority should be to invest in keeping them there, safely and securely.
Recognition is welcome. But recognition without investment will not sustain these families.
Kinship carers are already stepping up for children. It's time the Government stepped up for kinship carers.
