Kinship Connected - refer kinship carers to the research trial

Kinship Connected is our intensive support programme for kinship carers. It’s designed to improve wellbeing, build resilience, and help kinship families to feel more stable.

A Kinship Navigator will work with a kinship carer for up to 6 months. They’ll meet the kinship carer at home and in their community. They’ll help the kinship carer find local services and support and guide them through complex local systems.

A Kinship Navigator is a trained member of Kinship staff. They’re not part of the local authority, they’re independent. But they often work alongside local authority teams in places like Family Hubs.

A Kinship Navigator will:

• walk alongside the kinship carer and help them to navigate complex systems with confidence
• connect the kinship carer to local services, community resources, and peer support groups
• take time to understand the family’s needs using a trauma-informed and empathetic approach
• help the kinship carer to feel less isolated and more confident in their kinship caring role

The Kinship Navigator will support the kinship carer for up to 6 months. They’ll agree a plan at the start, based on what they and their family need.

Kinship Connected is open to all kinship carers regardless of legal order or how long they’ve been a kinship carer.

The only exception is kinship foster carers or kinship connected carers who already receive support from the local authority. If the kinship carer is tranistioning to a special guardian order you can refer.

Kinship Navigators come from a wide range of professional backgrounds. This includes social work, benefits and finance, education, legal services, and therapeutic support among others.

All Kinship Navigators are trained to understand kinship care. They understand the challenges kinship carers face and approach their work with empathy and a trauma-informed practice.

Some of our Kinship Navigators are kinship carers themselves, or have been in the past. We actively encourage lived experience in these roles.

Around 1 in 3 of our Kinship Navigators have lived experience of kinship care. We think that matters and we’re proud of it.

A Kinship Navigator will work with a kinship carer 1-to-1. The support they give will be based on their situation and goals, so it will look different for every kinship carer.

On average, they can expect at least 3 to 4 in-person meetings and at least 4 to 6 phone or video call sessions over the 6 months. But this depends on what the kinship carer needs. It could be more, or it could be less.

The Kinship Navigator can help with a wide range of things, including:

• emotional support – including trauma-informed support and help with therapeutic parenting
• money and benefits – such as help applying for Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Universal Credit, housing, blue badge, or grants
• education – such as support to get an education, health and care (EHC) plan for a child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
• legal matters – such as helping understand options or supporting a kinship carer at court
• immigration and passports – helping to fill in applications
• attending meetings – such as school meetings, child protection meetings, or looked-after children reviews
• food bank vouchers, Max cards, and other practical help
• referrals to parenting programmes and Kinship’s training service
• connecting to local peer support groups and other kinship carers
• signposting to other local and national services that can help in their caring role

When you take part in the programme, kinship carer also receive a free copy of the Kinship Care Guide for England. This is a practical guide to help the kinship carer understand their rights and what support is available.

At 3 months, the Kinship Navigator will check in with the kinship carer to review goals and adjust the support if needs have changed. At 6 months, they’ll have a final review together to celebrate what has been achieved and to make sure they know where to go next.

Ideally yes. This is the first research trial of it’s kind for kinship carers. We want to make the case that all kinship carers in England should be able to access Kinship Connected.

We understand that situations do change, so if a kinship carer does join the programme, they can talk to their Kinship Navigator about any changes needed in support.

They can withdrawal from the programme and trial at any point.

A pilot is a small-scale test of a programme before it’s rolled out more widely. We’re running a pilot to check that Kinship Connected works well in practice and reaches the kinship carers who need it most.

A randomised controlled trial (RCT) is a way of testing whether a programme really works. You compare 2 similar groups – 1 gets the programme, 1 doesn’t – and look at whether there’s a clear difference.

To make sure the comparison is fair, researchers use randomisation. Think of it like flipping a coin – it decides which group each kinship carer goes into. This removes bias and gives the strongest possible evidence about whether the programme made a real difference.

RCTs are used in children’s services because they help government and funders understand what genuinely improves outcomes for families.

A pilot RCT is a smaller test to check whether running a full RCT is possible. It focuses on whether the processes work. It helps us answer questions like:

• can we reach and recruit enough kinship families?
• do our referral pathways work as we expect?
• can Kinship Navigators follow the model consistently?
• can we collect data in a way that is ethical and realistic?
• will local authorities engage?

Kinship is running the pilot, and we’ve been matched with independent evaluators called CEI and Ipsos UK.

They understand kinship care in the UK. Their job is to understand how well the pilot works and what we need to improve before a full RCT can happen. They’re here to learn with us, not to judge us.

The pilot is funded by Foundations (a What Works Centre for Children and Families) who are in turn funded by the Department for Education. They have no influence over how the research is carried out or what the findings show.

The evaluation is run independently by CEI and Ipsos, which means the results will be published transparently, whatever they show.

We started working on the reserach trial in December 2025. The pilot runs over 18 months until August 2027.

Delivery for kinship carers starts in June 2026 and will finish at the end of July 2027

Yes. The trial is approved by an ethics committee and an advisory panel that includes kinship carers. Their views are central to how we’ve designed the pilot and how we’ll measure whether it works.

Kinship Connected was developed in 2013 based on what kinship carers told us we needed.

We want to make sure language is never a barrier to taking part. If English is not their first language, please let us know if or when you refer the kinship carer.

As the local authority, you will need to arrange an interpreter and we can potentially provide materials available in other languages.

There are 2 ways to access Kinship Connected during the pilot.

1. through a local authority referral: you refer the kinship carer to Kinship Connected. Yu will need to get initial consent to make a referral. You will need to explain that referrals are randomised as part of the trial
2. through self-referral: a kinship carer can also refer themselves directly to the programme

Both routes use an online form that asks for some key information about their family situation. These will need to completed for the kinship carer to take part.

When they apply, a computer will randomly put them into one of two groups:

• Group 1 – they start the programme straight away
• Group 2 – they join a waitlist and start around six months later

As part of the referral onto the trial, Kinship will ask kinship carers to complete a baseline form. The research trial team will use some of this information to help us understand who is accessing Kinship Connected. This will include:  

• information about them and their household 
• their experience as a kinship carer
• their wellbeing 
• the support they receive as a kinship carer 

For the trial, we will collect information in 4 ways. This includes: 

• forms completed by kinship carers 
• 1-to-1 discussions with kinship carers 
• administrative data from local authorities 
• programme and administrative data from Kinship 

We’ll ask kinship carers to complete a baseline form as part of their referral onto the trial. Six months later, they’ll be asked to fill it in again. 

They will receive a £20 voucher for completing the first baseline form. Kinship carers who wait 6 months to start Kinship Connected will receive another £20 voucher for completing the follow‑up form.  

We’ll start to open up to referrals from mid-June – the week commencing 15 June 2026.

It will be a 2-step process for both self-referrals and local authority referrals.