Kinship responds to the Autumn Budget 2024

We welcome confirmation in today’s Budget of the Government’s plans to deliver a trial of a kinship allowance in England. This forms a key part of the Government’s early efforts to improve children’s social care as part of its Phase 1 reforms from now through to 2026.

It’s also promising that the Government has clarified that it will “set out plans for fundamental reform of the children’s social care system” as part of the next phase of its Spending Review. Kinship’s #ValueOurLove campaign will continue to push for long-term investment and reform which delivers the financial, practical and emotional support which all kinship carers need and deserve.

We have led the way in campaigning shoulder-to-shoulder with kinship carers for financial allowances. Our own evidence demonstrates that it makes sense to invest in kinship care and outlines the benefits which improving financial support for kinship arrangements outside the care system would bring for children, families and the public purse.

We urge the Department for Education to work at pace to confirm plans for the kinship allowance trial so that kinship carers across England can understand how it might impact them.

Although the trial will ensure more kinship families get the financial support they need to help children thrive, it must not paralyse progress towards a wider rollout of financial allowances for kinship carers across the country. This must be the ambition for the Government if they are serious about prioritising kinship care and supporting children to remain in their family networks.

In the interim, we want to see local authorities continue to emulate pioneering practice in the delivery of non-means-tested financial allowances for kinship carers and ensure that financial circumstances never prevent a kinship arrangement from beginning or continuing.

There are other reforms announced in today’s Budget which could deliver welcome change for kinship families, including a £1 billion uplift for SEND and alternative provision funding and an increase to the earnings limit for Carer’s Allowance. Nearly half of children in kinship care in England have a special educational need or disability, and we know that too many kinship children aren’t getting the formalised support they need in education. In our most recent annual survey, more than a third of kinship carers said they were also providing unpaid care for adult family and friends in addition to their kinship caring responsibilities.