The lack of paid leave for kinship carers is an absurd injustice that must be addressed

Opening their homes at a moment’s notice, they often prevent children from going into the already overstretched care system. This quiet act of love saves the Government billions, yet they’re treated like second-class citizens. Without any right to paid leave from work when they take on the responsibility of raising a child, they are denied a right that every other type of new parent can and does rely on.

It’s an absurd and indefensible gap in the law. Adoptive parents are rightly granted paid leave, as are birth parents. But kinship carers who often step in overnight and in a crisis are expected back at work the next day, as if nothing has happened.

We would never expect a parent with a newborn to clock back in 24 hours later, so how can we justify asking this of someone else who has just taken in their newborn niece straight from hospital or a distressed nine-year-old granddaughter?

Kinship carers are paying a high price for stepping up to care for a loved one. In Kinship’s latest survey, 40 per cent of kinship carers were forced to claim or increase their benefits because they cannot access paid leave. The vast majority (69 per cent) say having no paid leave resulted in increased stress and anxiety. 10 per cent of kinship carers had a breakdown from the stress. The fallout for these families can last decades - employment prospects, financial stability and mental health are all jeopardised from day one. Yet there is no legal protection for them to take time off work.

The financial impact alone is staggering. Household costs inevitably rise for those taking in children. In our recent poll of kinship carers,  26 per cent struggled to afford essentials, 28 per cent had to borrow money, and a quarter said that they fell behind on paying bills. This includes those who had to stop working, reduce their hours, take unpaid leave or change jobs.

Consider Nash, an NHS midwife who took in her sister’s three children when she died in May 2024. She told us that adjusting to her new way of life, caring for traumatised children, trying to get them settled in new schools in a new area, all while grieving for her sister was a massive turmoil and caused her to have a mental health breakdown.   She tried to apply for adoption leave or equivalent, but her employer refused, so she felt she had no option but to hand in her notice.

Nash’s story is echoed by thousands of other kinship carers, many of whom feel they could have stayed in jobs had they been given the same basic rights as other parents, with the space and time to settle and bond with their kinship children. Kinship care rarely comes with notice, but it frequently comes in traumatic circumstances and with a need to navigate complex systems. But instead of giving carers the breathing space to do the right thing, our current system penalises them.

Those in power say they value families and children’s wellbeing and that they want children to grow up in supportive families wherever possible. Turning a blind eye to kinship carers exposes a very different reality. Kinship families are propping up the children’s social care system. Yet the state continues to look away, leaving kinship families in poverty and vital workers – frequently women and often in essential roles like nurses, teachers and retail staff – out of the labour market.

There is, however, a growing movement for change. This is a moment for everyone campaigning for better parental leave rights to stand together and fight for a system that reflects the reality of modern families. Kinship carers must not be left behind.

The government has recognised that this needs to be considered in the upcoming parental leave review. There is finally a clear opportunity to correct this injustice and bring the law in line with common sense and compassion. We now need to see a commitment to a statutory entitlement to paid leave for kinship carers.

Kinship carers are doing what we as a society ask of them - keeping children safe, loved and out of the care system. The least we can do is give them the basic right to time off when their whole world, and a child’s word, has been turned upside down forever.

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Dr Lucy Peake is CEO of Kinship.

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