Kinship carers keep families together. So why are we left without support?

28 May 2025, 10:17

My great nephew was in foster care while I was being assessed to be a kinship foster carer and it was a case of either I took him, or he would be adopted.

I asked the school where I was working as a teaching assistant for time off and about flexible working, but they didn’t offer me anything, and so it put me in a difficult situation. As a single mum, I didn’t know how I was supposed to look after my baby nephew if I couldn’t get time off work.

I had colleagues who were taking adoption and maternity leave, but there was nothing in place for kinship carers like me who step up to look after a child when their parents can’t. It was a hard decision to make, but I had no choice other than to quit my job, which I loved.

I thought I was done with nappies and night feeds. I had teenage children and a job I enjoyed. Now I’m forced to rely on benefits, I can’t work, and my mental health has suffered.

While I received a financial allowance for the first couple of years, it stopped this February and I don’t receive any support now.

If I’d had the opportunity to take paid leave from work with the option of working flexibly, that would have been a massive help. I would have had the security of an income and the social interaction that goes with the job because being a kinship carer can be very lonely and isolating.

Paid employment leave and flexible working would make a dramatic difference to kinship carers' lives. It’s not fair that we are doing the right thing by keeping children within the family, but are not receiving any support to help us do that.

My only lifeline is a Kinship support group I help run, where kinship carers can meet up for a cup of tea and a chat.

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Kinship carer and mother-of-two Samantha, 41, from Doncaster is raising her three-year-old great nephew who came to her when he was just seven months old.

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