Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Swann): I welcome Ms Jacqueline Williamson, chairperson of Kinship Care NI, and Ms Leona McMenamin, service manager of Kinship Care NI. Thank you for bearing with us this morning. Over to you.

Ms Jacqueline Williamson (Kinship Care NI): Thank you for the invitation to present to members on kinship care. I have provided members with a short briefing paper that outlines some of the key challenges that are experienced by kinship carers and their children. I have not gone into any significant detail, as directed, but, hopefully, during this 10-minute presentation I will pick up on issues that are of particular concern to members.

In Northern Ireland, kinship care is divided into two strands. The first is formal kinship care, which is where the state, in the form of social services, places a child in the care of an extended family member or friend. Those children are referred to as "looked-after children", they are owed a statutory duty and they and their kinship carers are entitled to exactly the same support as foster carers.

The other strand of kinship care is informal. That is where parents and family members agree among themselves on the care and upbringing of a child. Those arrangements are informal in that social services have not been involved in the placement of the child. In Northern Ireland, the majority of kinship care arrangements — around 90% — are informal. Within the formal kinship care system, 42% of children in foster care live with extended family members and friends, so we place a great emphasis on kinship care with family for children who cannot live with their parents. I will compare that with the figures in other parts of the UK. In England, the number of looked-after children living with extended family members and friends is 16% of the total looked-after population. In Wales, the level is 20%, and in Scotland it is 20%. Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of children in kinship care, with, as I said, 42% of children living in foster care.

Figures from the 2011 household census show that there were 8,655 children living in kinship care arrangements, of whom 26% were living with grandparents, 15% were living with siblings, 23% were living with other relatives and 36% were living with people who were unrelated to them. Almost a tenth — 9% — of children in kinship care had long-term health problems or disabilities that affected their day-to-day life. That compares with 5% of the general population of under-18s in Northern Ireland. Almost a quarter of kinship carers had their day-to-day life limited by a long-term health problem or disability, which is a slightly higher proportion than the general population of Northern Ireland. Eighteen per cent provided care for family members, friends or neighbours in addition to raising children of their extended family. That compares with 12% of the general population. Almost a third of households providing kinship care arrangements lived in the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland.

It is important, however, to note that the figures that relate to the 2011 census track only the number of children who live in kinship care arrangements without a parent present; they do not take into account the number of children who are being cared for by kin where there is a parent present. That is particularly interesting when it comes to determining the number of sibling kinship carers in Northern Ireland. The total number of children living in kinship care is likely to be between 10,000 and 12,000. The figure for the whole of the UK is between 200,000 and 300,000 children.

Touching on some of the benefits of kinship care, it brings with it unique benefits and has been shown to provide the best possible care option for children after care by their own parents. Research shows that children in kinship care are as safe and do as well, if not better, in school attendance and performance, health, self-esteem and social and personal relationships, as children who are cared for outside the family. The children maintain important family, cultural and community connections because they are placed with people they know; have regular contact with their birth parents, siblings and members of their extended family; enjoy greater placement stability than children in other foster care arrangements and are more likely to be placed with their siblings; experience greater calm and stability in their placements than children placed with non-kinship carers; and exhibit fewer behavioural problems than those placed outside the family network. Most importantly, children in kinship care say that they feel settled, loved and secure.

While outcomes for children in kinship care are better compared with those for children in other care arrangements, those outcomes are, to some extent, achieved to the detriment of their kinship carers, many of whom experience extreme isolation, suffer from anxiety and depression and live in situations of severe poverty. I touched on the issue of supporting employment within kinship care arrangements. Grandparents and other family members play a key role in families, and legislation and social policies often disregard that contribution. Many kinship carers give up their employment or reduce their hours when they take on the full-time care of children. Kinship carers, particularly grandparents and older kinship carers who are caring for babies, toddlers and quite young children face a number of distinct challenges. Some of them feel under pressure to give up their jobs. In some situations, social services insist that carers give up their employment in order to meet the needs of the children whom they care for. That can result in kinship carers having to make very difficult decisions between continuing to work and meeting their existing obligations to their own children, including paying a mortgage and meeting their household expenses, and keeping children of their extended family, whom they very much love, within their extended family network.

There are, however, examples of progressive policies that have been pursued by European states that recognise and, in some cases, reward grandparents and other familial carers. Those include providing flexibility for parental leave or allowances to be shared with grandparents and recognising the particular needs of families with teenage parents. In Germany, for example, parents are entitled to take parental leave for up to three years after a child's birth, 12 months of which can be transferred until the child is eight. That leave entitlement can be transferred to a grandparent if the parent is seriously ill or disabled, or if a parent dies. A grandparent can also take the leave if the parent or teenager is still in full-time education and the parent does not want to take the leave themselves.

In Hungary, parental allowances and leave can be transferred to a grandparent if parents agree and if the child is looked after within the grandparent's home. In Portugal, grandparents are entitled to a financial allowance if the mother is aged 16 or younger and the grandparents live together with the grandchildren. Grandparents are also entitled to take 30 days a year and receive a financial allowance in order to care for a sick child if parents are unable to look after that child because of work commitments.

In the UK, as of 2011, grandparents who give up work to provide at least 20 hours of childcare for children under the age of 12 so that parents can continue to work are entitled to claim National Insurance credits towards their basic state pension. More recently, in August 2014, David Cameron announced that he would consider giving grandparents who were raising their grandchildren the same rights as adoptive parents, and I believe that, from next year, adoptive parents will be entitled to nine months of paid leave. However, it is unclear at this stage whether anything will come of that.

The number of children living in kinship care arrangements, both at a formal and informal level, is increasing, but carers bringing up children in informal arrangements have no entitlement to support. Many kinship carers give up their job so that they can meet their new caring responsibilities, and sometimes the decision to give up work is by choice, but, in other cases, kinship carers are asked to give up employment by social services so that they can meet the needs of the children in their care. Balancing the needs of children with work and other family commitments is no easy task for kinship carers and is one of the reasons why children in kinship care live in situations of severe poverty.

I will finish there, and I am happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Swann): Thank you very much. Pat, we will go to you, because you have championed kinship care and a number of related issues through the Committee, and it was through your invitation that our guests are here.

Mr Ramsey: First, I want to acknowledge the contribution that you make, Jacqueline and Leona, to educating and creating awareness and your capacity to help so many people across Northern Ireland. I think that it was two years ago, or maybe longer, that you had a walk from Derry to Stormont to create awareness, and you were met on the steps by the First Minister and deputy First Minister. That in itself was tremendous.

As the Chair said, we have, during consideration of various forms of regulation and legislation coming through on employment law, parental leave and adoption, tried to amend them to acknowledge the role that kinship care plays. One question that I had was whether it was recognised elsewhere. We have a researcher here today and I think that it would be very useful to research where it has been recognised in other places and other Parliaments by way of allowing leave, as you mentioned. I do not see any difficulty with allowing parental leave when someone is engaged in kinship care. Many kinship carers are looking after disabled children as well, as you know, Jacqueline. We are trying to find out whether there is existing good practice. You referred to other places. Are the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly looking at any way of trying to bring forward legislation that would, in some way, bring kinship care into a more formal setting?

Ms Williamson: At the moment, if you look at other parts of the UK, they are trying to come to grips with kinship care as a unique care arrangement for children. They are also trying to get to grips with the different care options that are available to children in kinship care. There are different legal orders that facilitate and support children in kinship care. There is statutory guidance: there is a requirement to produce guidance for family and friends care, as it is known in England. I do not think that there have been any significant developments. There have been a lot of announcements by both Labour and Conservative Governments about supporting kinship care, but I do not think that there have been many developments. Campaigners in England are pushing for the same rights for kinship carers as those that will come in for adoptive parents next year, which is nine months' parental leave. It will be very much dependent on how things move forward.

Mr Ramsey: It would be a good idea, as well requesting that Eoin has a look at it, to refer the Hansard report of this session to the Department. The Department is aware of it and it has come up a number of times with officials at our end. Unfortunately, they were not in a position even to amend some of the previous legislation that was coming through because we were told it was not appropriate and it was not good practice. However, they said that it would look favourably on any other opportunity that came up. In light of that, I think that we should write to the Department to ask whether there is an opportunity to be the first to step up and bring forward legislation that would make a change and give comfort to so many people across Northern Ireland who act as kinship carers. They do exactly the same job as a normal parent, but they are not valued as much by the state. That is a position that we need to get to.

Ms Sugden: I want to echo what Pat said. It happens, but you have been successful in putting a label on it so that the state can follow up with the support that carers rightly need. On the opportunity for legislation, while it is probably not appropriate for this Committee, it may be worth thinking about Steven Agnew's Children's Services Co-operation Bill, which has the aim of providing safety and stability. This may fall under that, and there may be an opportunity to amend it. The repercussions of that Bill could compel the Department to do something, because it is a cross-cutting Bill. On your key issues for consideration, we need to enshrine this in law in some way to take the best opportunity. There may be an opportunity to amend that Bill in this mandate. I know that the Consideration Stage will probably be in September.

The Chairperson (Mr Swann): Jacqueline and Leona, unless you have anything else that you want to add, I think that is us. Your briefing paper referred to the motion that went through the Assembly in 2012, acknowledging the importance of the work that you do. That has been reflected by the members who have spoken today.

Mr Flanagan: I want to commend you for providing such good advocacy for the people you represent. Speaking for myself, I genuinely knew nothing about the level of support that was there and that people were actually entitled to help. I know a number of people who were in that situation. It is right and proper that you are doing the work that you are doing to raise awareness, but there is much more that we can do as an Assembly in trying to help the people you represent. We will continue to do that.

Ms Williamson: I would like to finish by touching on some of our achievements and picking up on what members have mentioned. In the last 20 months, we have secured just short of £500,000 in financial support, including social security benefits, for kinship carers in order to take the children they are caring for out of poverty. We have established two — soon to be three, with the addition of Belfast — services for kinship carers that include a Caring for Kin project, a kinship carers' support service, which are the first of their kind in the whole of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. We are meeting the needs of kinship carers and their children, and we are doing it in a unique way. In the last 20 months, we have supported 283 children and young people, as well as 260 kinship carers.

We have been grateful for the support that we have received from politicians. You mentioned the cross-party support that was secured in the Assembly for the motion on kinship care. However, when the Adoption and Children Bill comes out for consideration, we would like Members to look at the whole concept of special guardianship orders, which will come in in Northern Ireland, and ensure that we look at providing a statutory duty to provide support as part of those arrangements. While kinship care is good for children, it is also good for families and communities. If we do not provide support, those arrangements will fail and the children will end up in the public care system. If you could support the concept of special guardianship orders and keeping families together, we would be very grateful. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Swann): Jacqueline and Leona, thank you very much for the work that you do and for your time here today.