Find out how you can commission our services in your local area to support kinship carers.
For professionals:
Kinship Reach
Developed from our award-winning covid response programme, Kinship Reach provides immediate support to kinship carers through phone and video calls.
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What is Kinship Reach?
Kinship Reach is a time-limited and remote intervention for kinship families. It is a trauma-informed approach and uses a solution-focused model, working towards a key goal and identifying strengths that carers can use to improve family outcomes.
Kinship Reach is provided by Kinship Family Workers (many who are kinship carers themselves) who offer telephone-based or video-call support to kinship carers.
The Kinship Reach model came from our award winning covid response programme, where we partnered with 69 local authorities and 12 regional adoption agencies across England.
It follows a partnership model which requires collaboration with local authority partners. It supports kinship carers to:
- access community-based assets as support for families
- access emotional support for kinship carers which provides a therapeutic element to the model
Kinship carers build a trusting, quality relationship with their Kinship Family Worker. By working in a trauma-informed way, carers can experience wellbeing benefits from a therapeutic relationship with their allocated Family Worker.
Alongside the therapeutic support provided through Kinship Reach, support includes:
- liaising with professional networks of support around the family
- monthly online support groups are also set up and facilitated by Kinship Family Workers
- signposting to our free services including training and advice
- signposting to other organisations who can support kinship families
The impact on kinship carers
Kinship Reach was developed from our Kinship Response programme. A six month impact report was produced at the time and you can read more about the background, outcomes and report below.
Background
At the outset of the pandemic, kinship carers reported to us feeling scared about catching the virus, and what would happen to their children if they fell seriously ill or died.
As the lockdown continued their concerns moved from home-schooling and the impact of lockdown on the children in their care, to exhaustion from caring for the children 24 hours a day without a break.
When the COVID-19 crisis hit, Kinship Response was adapted from our existing Kinship Connected programme in order to meet the evolving and growing needs of kinship carers.
It was developed in consultation with local authorities and with feedback from special guardians, to provide targeted and time limited telephone and virtual support during the pandemic.
Funded through the Adoption and Special Guardian Support Fund (ASGSF), Kinship Response offered a comprehensive package of support beyond the specialist therapeutic support normally funded by the ASGSF.
This included tailored advice and one-to-one and peer support which is what kinship carers told us they needed and for which there was and continues to be strong evidence of impact.
Of the kinship carers who were referred to Kinship Response during the pandemic:
- 93% say they feel more confident in their caring role
- 68% say they are more able to manage family relationships
- 92% report having reduced concerns about their child’s wellbeing
- 78% feel less lonely and 79% feel less isolated
As we developed the programme post COVID-19, to become Kinship Reach, we continue to provide quarterly reports on outcomes for local authority partners.
Support kinship carers in your local authority
Join our professionals' network for social workers, academics and other professionals with an interest in kinship care.
Free for kinship carers in England, and available in-person and online. Our training service responds to the needs of kinship carers wherever they are on their kinship journey.