Local authority leaders have called for more help for those who are caring for a close relative as a new survey reveals that eight in 10 kinship carers are failing to receive crucial support.
The charity Kinship's annual survey The Cost of Loving reveals that 98% of kinship carers believe that the children they look after would be in the care system without them.
The poll also found that over a third (36%) of carers who don’t get the support they need now say they may be unable to continue to care for their children.
Kinship carers are relatives and close friends who care for 162,400 children in England and Wales, more than double the number of children in foster care.
The survey of over 1,500 kinship carers in England and Wales discovered that 45% have had to give up jobs to care for their kinship children, leaving nearly six in 10 (58%) borrowing money, using short term loans and credit cards and forcing seven in 10 to spend their life savings and pension pots.
Four in 10 (40%) are now skipping meals, using food banks and buying less food. As the financial squeeze tightens, nearly six in 10 (59%) say they will not put the heating on this winter, and 26% say they won’t be able to pay bills.
More than four in 10 (43%) will use ovens less and 41% will take fewer baths and showers.
Kinship’s CEO Dr Lucy Peake said: ‘Our survey results send a clear and urgent call to Government to act now to support kinship carers, who have been overlooked and undervalued for far too long. Without support thousands of carers who have been pushed to the brink of despair may no longer be able to look after the children they love, risking an influx of children into the care system
‘It’s outrageous that in today’s society many kinship families will be cold and hungry this winter because they don’t receive enough support to maintain their basic human rights.’
Former Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said: ‘In places like New Zealand family-based care is recognised and supported financially. It should be here too. We know that providing children with care from family or friends they know and trust can provide the kind of stability and support they may not find elsewhere. It also makes long term financial sense, reducing costs on already stretched statutory services as fewer children end up going into an increasingly expensive care system.
‘The Government should be doing all it can to recognise the value of kinship care, and to expand support for kinship carers, and make kinship care a key part of its children's social care reform.’
Cllr Louise Gittins, chair of the Local Government Association’s (LGA) Children and Young People Board, said: ‘Kinship carers provide invaluable love, care and support for many children who can’t live safely with their birth parents, allowing them to remain with their wider family rather than needing to go into state care.
‘The recent Independent Review of Children’s Social Care reflected our call for better support for kinship carers, and for additional funding to be made available to enable councils to move to a system in which all families and kinship carers receive the support they need, when they need it.
‘Despite councils diverting funding from other services into children’s social care to keep children safe, soaring demand means that councils are having to make exceptionally difficult decisions about where to focus their spending, and this can mean that support for kinship families is not always as comprehensive as councils would like it to be.’
