Kinship Knowledge Exchange 2026: Building the kinship system that families need

What happens on the day

1. 10am to 10.15am

   Welcome from the conference chairs

   • Dr Beverley Barnett-Jones, Trustee, Kinship and Nurture Futures Co-Founder
   • Tim Fisher, Practice Lead Kinship

2. 10.15am to 10.30am

   Keynote 1

   • Dr Jahnine Davis, National Kinship Care Ambassador,

3. 10.30am to 11.00am

   Keynote 2

   The North East Lincolnshire Kinship Zone
   • Ann-Marie Matson, Director of Children’s Services, North East Lincolnshire Council
   • Lisa February, Kinship Carer, North East Lincolnshire Council

4. 11.00am to 11.15am

   Keynote 3

   • Yvette Stanley, National Director, Social Care, Ofsted

5. 11.15am to 11.30am

   Questions

6. 11.30am to 11.40am

   Break

7. 11.40am to 11.55am

   Keynote 4

   • Emma Davies, Deputy Director, Adoption, Family Justice and Alternatives to Care, Department for Education

8. 11.55am to 12.15pm

   Well-supported kinship care: learning from kinship navigator programmes in the USA

   • Lucy Peake, CEO, Kinship

9. 12.15pm to 12.30pm

   Reflections on the morning

   • Dr Beverley Barnett-Jones, Trustee, Kinship
   • Tim Fisher, Practice Lead, Kinship

10. 12.30pm to 1.30pm

    Lunch

11. 1.30pm to 2.30pm

    Workshops – delegates choose to attend two of four workshops

    1. Kinship Zones and the financial allowances pilot
    This workshop brings together practitioners and leaders from North East Lincolnshire and Medway, two of the seven local authorities selected as Kinship Zones as part of the Department for Education's £126 million pilot launched in April 2026.
    
    As Kinship Zone areas, both authorities are now operating at the leading edge of the Families First Partnership Programme, testing what it genuinely takes to stand up Family Network Support Packages alongside a guaranteed kinship allowance.
    
    The session will focus on the practical and cultural changes needed on the ground, from identification and early engagement of family networks to building the infrastructure, relationships and workforce confidence that Family Network Support Packages (FNSPs) require.
    
    While the Kinship Zones bring specific expectations and opportunities, the learning from this work is directly relevant to all local authorities now tasked with developing and operating Family Network Support Packages, and we'll use this as a space to get honest about what that actually demands in practice.
    
    • With Kinship Zone local authorities – North East Lincolnshire Council and Medway Council.
    
    2. Approaches to kinship family participation and co‑production
    Rose Byrne, a sibling kinship carer and someone who grew up in kinship care herself, will be co-facilitating a session with Tim Fisher, Practice Lead at Kinship.
    
    The session will ask: how are local authorities responding to the new statutory duty, and how are kinship carers mobilising as active participants in shaping that response?
    
    We will be sharing up-to-date case study examples, including the Carers Council model, which brings in the views of informal and less-heard kinship carers, and the Listening Space activity, which works with children and young people on what matters to them and their kinship families.
    
    The aim is to have a vital conversation with local authorities about how we co-produce local offer support and build futures for kinship families.
    
    • Led by Tim Fisher, Practice Lead, Kinship.
    • With local authorities and kinship care experienced young people
    
    3. Kinship Connected: Navigator Programmes, the pilot RCT and the Families First Partnership
    This workshop introduces Kinship Connected: Kinship's specialist Navigator programme, and the pilot randomised controlled trial currently underway across four local authority areas in England. It is the first rigorous test of a kinship Navigator programme in this country, and this session will explore what it does, the principles that underpin it, and what well-supported kinship care looks like in your area.
    
    Kinship Connected provides intensive, one-to-one support to kinship carers over six months through a specialist Navigator, built on relationship-based, strengths-based and trauma-informed practice.
    
    The pilot RCT funded by Foundations and independently evaluated by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation and Ipsos UK is the first rigorous test of a kinship Navigator programme in England, and its findings will shape the national evidence base for kinship care.
    
    We will explore what the programme does and how it works before looking at how Kinship Connected maps onto the Families First Partnership reforms, including Family Network Support Packages, Family Group Decision Making and co-location within Family Hubs.
    
    We believe Navigator programmes are not just a service operating within the FFP system, but an integral part of it. Kinship carers are the family network in practice and supporting them well sits at the heart of the FFP agenda.
    
    Delegates will also have dedicated time to reflect on what this means for their own area, what is working, where the gaps are, and what a Navigator programme could mean for the kinship families in their local authority.
    
    • Led by Fiona Summers, Head of Programmes, Kinship.
    • With Fiona Harvey Team Manager in the Connected Persons Team at Rochdale Council (a funded Navigator local authority) and Amy Hall, Principal Advisor at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI)
    
    4. New research on kinship carers’ networks and targeted support planning
    Professor Felicity Thomas of the University of Exeter will guide us through key findings from the ‘Understanding kinship carer networks to inform targeted support’ research. Supported by the National Institute for Health Research and run in collaboration with Kinship, this research combined in-depth social network mapping with kinship carers in Torbay, Walsall and Newcastle with additional questions in Kinship’s annual survey to understand the shape and distribution of kinship carers’ informal support networks, uncovering insights about who it is that kinship families rely on outside of formal support, what support is most useful for them, and how this is associated with characteristics such as age and length of time as a kinship carer.
    
    We will focus our time on reflecting and discussing key takeaways for professional practice around support planning for kinship carers and families, drawing on recommendations from the project’s support planning resources, co-produced with kinship carers and supported by CoramBAAF and Families in Harmony. We will be joined by Janice Santos, a member of the project’s Kinship Carer Network and Ann Horne and Clare Seth, CoramBAAF Kinship Care Consultants.
    
    • Led by Anam Raja, Research Manager, Kinship
    • With Professor Felicity Thomas, Exeter University; Ann Horne and Clare Seth, Kinship Care Consultants, CoramBAAF; and Janice Santos, Peer Researcher and Kinship Carer, Project Kinship Carer Network.

12. 2.30pm to 3.30pm

    Workshops repeated

13. 3.30pm to 3.50pm

    Panel

14. 3.50pm to 4.00pm

    Closing remarks

    • Lucy Peake, CEO, Kinship