Contact: Rosie Smith ext: 7173 email: [email protected]

1 Summary

This report describes the progress of, and outcomes for, the Kinship Care Project in Hampshire, from its beginning in November 2002, to April 2008.

1.1 Kinship Care has been developed as a project in Hampshire to offer family care by close relatives (relatives as defined in the Children Act 1989 Section 105, i.e. grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings or step-parents) for children who cannot live at home with their parents. Kinship Care is an informal family arrangement for children, which means they are cared for outside the care system, but the child and his/her carers can be supported by services from Children's Services Department, to enable the relatives to offer care.

1.2 Hampshire has taken the lead amongst Local Authorities nationally in developing a policy framework for kinship care that enables an assessment and support service (including financial support to carers in financial need) to be offered to close relatives caring for children outside the care system.

1.3 Kinship Care directly supports the County Council's corporate aims, in maximising well-being by supporting care for children outside of the care system and with their extended families, where they feel loved and wanted; in making Hampshire more safe and secure for all, by offering these children the security and stability of family care and in enhancing quality of place by keeping children within their own communities .

1.4 Kinship Care also directly supports the 5 aims of `Every Child Matters' (the Children Act 2004 Section 10 (2) , in that Kinship carers are being supported to provide safe and stable homes for children; they and their support workers are working with health and education services to ensure that the children they care for are healthy and are enjoying, achieving and making a positive contribution and, if carers are in financial need, Hampshire is paying an allowance to enable the kinship carers to look after the child.

1.5 Kinship Care is a Hampshire project and is different from Family & Friends Foster care, the latter being the same as all other types of foster care. Family and Friends foster care describes situations where a child needs to enter the care system and is placed with relatives or friends. These carers must then be assessed to become approved as Family and Friends foster carers, and they undergo the same assessments and procedures, and receive the same services, as do County (mainstream) foster carers.

2 Context for the Kinship Care Project

2.1 In 2001, following Hampshire's work on Family Group Conferences, the Department of Health invited Hampshire to take part in research into Family and Friends/Kinship Care, under the auspices of the Family Rights Group. The research report was published in 2001 and many of the report's recommendations were incorporated into the Department of Health's discussion document on Kinship/Family and Friends Care issued on 1 November 2002.

2.2 Research findings indicate that relative placements produce good outcomes for children: these placements are more stable, keep children safe, are culturally appropriate and promote positive identity. They are the care arrangements children say they would chose and where they feel loved and wanted.

These findings are supported by our experience in Hampshire in our Kinship Care project (see Section 6 of this report. re: Outcomes for children in Kinship Care in Hampshire).

2.3 The research also found that relative care is less well resourced and supported in many Local Authorities than other types of care for children , and also that relative carers tend to be poorer, have more health problems and fewer material resources than those people who apply to become mainstream foster carers( who will of course, have planned and organised their lives in order that they can become foster carers). Relative carers usually take on a child because of a family emergency and their motivation is often because of their close ties with the child and their wish to prevent that child coming into care.

2.4 The research report recommended that relative care should be seen as a distinct service type of care and that relative carers be seen as a discrete group.

2.5 Following the Hampshire research the Kinship Care project was established in the County in 2002, to take forward the report's findings and to develop services for children and Kinship Carers.

3 Kinship Care Project and Family & Friends Foster Care.

3.1. The Kinship care project is different to, and separate from, Family and Friends fostering. Children in Family and Friends foster care are children who are placed with close, or more distant, relatives or friends and they are children who need to be in care in order that their welfare be safeguarded.

3.2 All approved foster carers , including Family and Friends foster carers, are regulated by The Children Act '89, and the National Fostering Regulations and National Minimum Standards , the requirements of which , as foster carers, they must meet. Family and Friends Foster carers receive services and a fostering allowance from the Department for each child placed, in exactly the same way as do County foster carers.

3.3 Alongside the Kinship Care project, Children's Services Department has also been very active in promoting Family and Friends foster care for children who need to be in care. Currently, approximately 23% of all Hampshire CLA who are placed in some type of foster care are with Family & Friends foster carers. As at April 2008, there were 186 children in care placed with Family and Friends foster carers and 630 placed with County foster carers.

3.4 Children in kinship care arrangements are not in care, therefore their kinship carers do not have to become foster carers and thus do not have to meet all the requirements of the Fostering Regulations and Fostering Services National Minimum Standards, neither do they receive a fostering allowance for the child/ren they care for.

3.5 However, in the Kinship Care Project the department ensures that all kinship carers undergo all statutory and Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks, have a health assessment and an assessment of their capacity to care for the child. There is also an assessment of the carers' needs for services to support their care for the child. This includes a financial assessment if they are in financial need and, if eligible following the financial assessment, kinship carers can receive a Kinship Care Allowance, which is paid by Hampshire under Section 17, Children Act 1989.

As at April 2008 there were 74 children in kinship care arrangements, being cared for by 57 carers.

4 Objectives of the Kinship Care project in Hampshire

4.1 These are as follows:

· To ensure that children , who need to live away from home, do not unnecessarily enter the care system and also to enable these children to be cared for within their extended family.

· In addition, where appropriate, to bring out of the care system those children currently living with close relatives and to enable those relatives to become Kinship Carers or to take out a Residence Order or a Special Guardianship Order.

· To set up assessment and support systems (including assessment for financial support) to enable kinship carers to offer long-term/permanent care for these children .

· By means of providing support workers to support these kinship carers, to increase the opportunities for children who cannot live at home , to remain cared for within their extended families and within their own communities, rather than to enter the care system and be placed with County foster carers, Family and Friends foster carers, or be in residential care, or adopted.

5 Implementation

5.1 A Kinship Care Project Manager was appointed in 2002, and 3 part-time Kinship Care Support Workers came into post in 2003. The Kinship Care Support Workers work with carers individually and also run Kinship Carers' Support Groups across the County

5.2 During the piloting phase of the project ( June 2003 - December 2003, in the Western Area) and during the subsequent implementation across the county, the development of the project was supported by consultation from a Kinship Carers' Users' Group. Currently the Kinship Carer Support Groups meet at intervals with senior departmental staff, to give their views about how the Kinship Care Project should develop and change.

5.3 There is on-going work to promote the use of Family Group Conferences to link with Kinship Care. Work also continues with partner agencies to improve services for carers and for children in Kinship Care.

5.4 In 2003, Hampshire and the Family Rights Group developed an Assessment Tool for the assessment of Kinship Carers and for the assessment of the suitability of the arrangements for children in Kinship Care, which is designed specifically to be appropriate to the needs of Kinship Carers.

5.5 Every child in kinship care will have been assessed as being a Child in Need and will then receive a Core Assessment and will continue to have an allocated social worker if that is an assessed need However, because the children in kinship care arrangements are not in care, they are not subject to all the regular meetings, statutory reviews, health assessments and education planning that a child in the care system must receive.

6 Outcomes for Children within the Kinship Care Project

6.1 The number of children being cared for in Kinship Care arrangements has steadily increased - from 11 children (and 11 carers) in February 2004 to 66 children as at 31.3.07, to 74 children (57 Kinship Carers) in April 2008.

6.2 Of the 74 children in kinship care arrangements as at April 2008, 45 are with grandparents; 22 are with aunts/uncles and 7 are with an older sibling. There are 49 boys in kinship care and 25 girls and ages range from the youngest aged 1, up to the oldest aged 18 ( which is the age at which kinship care ends, although these young people usually remain with their carers, until ready to move on to independence, as in any family).

6.3 Outcomes for children in kinship care arrangements are very positive, i.e. out of 154 children placed in Kinship Care arrangements between June 2003 -April 2008, 24 of these children have moved on to Residence Order with their carers; 21 returned home to live with their parents; 5 moved to live with other relatives; 3 moved to a Special Guardianship Order and 15 have moved on to independence.

6.4 Only 12 children of the 154 originally placed in Kinship care experienced a breakdown of the kinship care arrangement i.e. a disruption rate of approximately 7.8%. Six of the breakdowns of arrangement were for girls and six for boys. One of this group was age 11 when the kinship care arrangement had to come to an end. The rest were aged between 15 - 17. Four of these arrangements were with grandparents, five with aunt/uncle and three with a sibling.

6.5 As can be seen from the above, Kinship Care in Hampshire is proving a very stable arrangement for children. Research also bears this out - it has been found that relative carers are exceptionally committed to the children they care for. Research also shows that the children in need who are being cared for by relatives have the same, often complex and challenging, needs as do the children who are in the care system and thus support for their kinship carers is crucial in maintaining their placements.

6.8 The children in Kinship Care arrangements are unable to live with their parent/s and have been assessed as being Children in Need. The assumption therefore, is that all of these children would have needed to enter the care system and be placed with mainstream foster carers, in residential care, or be adopted, had not relatives been able to offer care and had not the Department given support to these relatives to enable them both to become Kinship Carers and to maintain the care arrangements over time.

6.9. The number of children in care in Hampshire has fallen from 1037 in March 2007 to 1004 as at end of January 2008. It could be inferred from this that projects such as Kinship Care have therefore been successful in preventing some children entering the care system.

6.10 Some of the children's views about being in Kinship Care in Hampshire have been that they prefer not to be in care, where they feel different and often experience discrimination. They also say they feel loved and wanted when they are able to live with their extended family.

7 Outcomes for Kinship Carers - Kinship Care Support Service

7.1 The Kinship Care Support Service (3 part-time workers based in each of the three Children's Services Areas- North, Western and South and East) offers support to Kinship Carers and also to carers with a Residence Order or Special Guardianship Order for a child, in situations where the child has been assessed as being a Child in Need.

7.2 The Kinship Care Support Service currently offers one-to-one support to 57 Kinship Carers and to 52 carers with Residence Orders and to 4 carers with an SGO.

7 3 In the kinship care cohort there are 45 children being cared for by 34 grandparent carers; 22 children being cared for by 17 aunt/uncle carers and 7 children being cared for by 6 sibling carers. 17 of our kinship carers care for 2 or more siblings.

7.4 Approximately 25 Kinship Carers are regularly attending a number of locally-based Support groups around the County.

7.5 The Kinship Care Support service was evaluated in August 2004 by the former Performance Management Unit. The evaluation was very positive; many carers spoke of the fact that, without the services offered by their support workers, they might have had difficulty in continuing to care.

7.6 Kinship Carers frequently request support at the beginning of a placement, during the `settling-in' period, but then often say it is sufficient to know there is a support service they can call upon, should the need arise, as the placement progresses.

7.7 Two of the kinship care support workers have undertaken training in 2007/8 so that they can now deliver the Triple P parenting programmes to individual carers. This has already had very beneficial results in strengthening relationships between children and carers and thus further securing the child's care arrangement.

7.8 The kinship care support service has worked with the Fostering Service Training Officer to devise training/information-giving sessions for both kinship carers and family and friends foster carers, to cover topics of common interest to both.

7.9 Although kinship carers are not foster carers and thus Kinship Care arrangements sit outside of the Fostering Service Regulations and associated Inspections by Ofsted, the Kinship Care Service has nevertheless been included as part of the inspection of Hampshire's fostering services. The Kinship Care Service has been consistently commended by the inspectors.

8 Hampshire's role in the development of Kinship Care in the UK

8.1 A national conference- `Kinship Care' was held by Hampshire County Council Social Services Department in May 2003, to launch Hampshire's Kinship Care initiative and to share practice and perspectives with carers and with other Local Authorities. In 2005 Hampshire hosted the Grandparents' Association Annual Conference and in 2007 the Kinship Care Project Manager spoke about Hampshire's project. at a national conference organised by Community Care

8.2 The Kinship Care Project Manager has been part of the Consultation and Oversight group for a large kinship care research project, carried out by Joan Hunt, University of Oxford , due to be published Sept 2008.

8.3 The Kinship Care Project Manager chairs the South East Regional Special Interest Group for Kinship Care, which exists to share good practice and promote the development of policy and practice amongst those Local Authorities who attend.

8.4 The Kinship Care Project Manager is the LA representative on the Kinship Alliance Group. This group is attended by voluntary organisations who work with relative carers. It is chaired by The Family Rights Group and it exists to represent the views and interests of relative carers and to lobby and campaign for changes in legislation and provision in order that the needs of kinship carers are better understood and met.

8.5 Hampshire's position in leading the way in Kinship Care has been recognised in references in articles in the media (article in Reader's Digest February 2008; reference regarding Hampshire's good practice in an article about relative care in the Financial Section of the Sunday Times 2007; reference to Hampshire's good practice in article regarding relative care in `The Guardian' 2.4. 2008)

9 Legal framework for Kinship Care

9.1 The Children Act 1989 Section 23 (b) places a duty on the Local Authority, in circumstances where a child can no longer live at home, to first make arrangements for the child to live with a relative or friend. In addition, the Local Authority must not seek an Order for a child, unless not to do so would compromise the child's safety and well-being.

9.2 Legal advice taken within Hampshire states, that for the purposes of the Kinship Care Policy, children are only able to be placed outside the care system with relatives as defined under the Children Act '89 (Section 105), i.e. grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings or step-parents.

In other placements, with distant relatives or friends, the child will need to enter the care system and his/her carers become Family & Friends Foster Carers.

9.3 Current legislation therefore does not allow Kinship Care to embrace the broader spectrum of care arrangements for children with more distant relatives or friends and keep these children out of care.

9.4 It is likely that the new Children and Young Person's Bill currently being debated in Parliament will emphasise the duty on local authorities to first look to a child's family or friends to take on care of a child when that child can no longer live at home. Hampshire is well-placed to respond to this , as the department is committed to develop and support relative care and already has policies in place which ensure that it places and supports as many of our children with relative or friend carers as possible.

10 Finance for Kinship carers- financial implications

10.1 Kinship Carers are not foster carers and so do not receive a fostering allowance. If Kinship Carers are in financial need they can receive an assessment of their income and expenditure, following which they may qualify for all, or part of, a weekly Kinship Care Allowance.

10.2 Kinship Care allowances are paid according to the age of the child as follows:

Maximum weekly allowances:-

Child age 0-1 £73.99

Child age 2-4 £76.02

Child age 5-10 £84.70

Child age 11-15 £97.37

Child age 16-18 ( if in full-time education) £126.07

10.3 By re-prioritising within current budget allocations, a budget has been identified for Kinship Care. Payments are made under Section 17 (Children Act 1989) and the children being financially supported in kinship care have been assessed by the department as being Children in Need under the terms of Section 17.

10.4 The financial assessment , the formula applied and the level of maximum allowance is the same for Kinship Care, Residence Order, Adoption and Special Guardianship Allowances. As at April 2008, current Kinship Care Allowance costs (paid out of local Section 17 budgets) are approximately £6,158.00 a week to support 48 children (the additional 26 children in Kinship Care do not need financial support, as their Kinship Carers have been assessed as not being in financial need), which averages £120 per child per week.

The comparative average weekly costs per child receiving a fostering allowance is £153.00 a week. It should however be noted that the majority of foster carers also receive a skills fee in addition to the fostering allowance, which increases this average weekly cost..

10.5 In circumstances where a child is brought out of the care system into Kinship Care, the child's carers are paid a Transitional Kinship Care Allowance which is the equivalent of the fostering allowance they have been receiving, minus Child Benefit (£15 a week) and Child Tax Credits (£10 a week), both of which carers can then claim, and minus festival, birthday and holiday allowances and skills fees received when fostering. Being in Kinship Care, the child is no longer in care so will not need to receive (at minimum) 3-monthly social worker visits or have regular Reviews and other meetings. Thus, in all these respects, the costs of a kinship care arrangement for a child still represents a saving to the Department.

10.6 In summary, Kinship Care not only provides good outcomes for children, but also represents good value for money for the Local Authority.

11 Personnel Implications

11.1 The staffing for the project remains the same as at its inception in 2002, i.e. a Project Manager (Commissioning Officer,18.5 hours per week) and 3 Kinship Care Support workers (Children's Services Assistants, all 18.5 hours per week).

12 Impact Assessment

12.1 A Race and Equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact has been identified. Indeed, it should be noted that arrangements for children to be cared for within their own extended families positively promotes their cultural, religious, language and racial identity needs.

13 Recommendations

· That the Children and Young People Select Committee note the progress that Children's Services is making in developing the Kinship Care Service and the profile that this service has nationally.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None