Kinship CEO, Dr Lucy Peake, awarded Churchill Fellowship

We’re thrilled that our Chief Executive, Dr Lucy Peake has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship for a research trip to the USA, to learn more about different models of support for kinship families.

The Fellowship, to take place during 2024-25, will enable Lucy to see first-hand how ‘Kinship Navigator Programs’ are working across the US, meeting professionals and kinship carers to see how this model of support might be able to help kinship families in England and Wales.

Kinship Navigator Programs place kinship care experts within local areas to provide a supportive ‘one-stop-shop’ for kinship carers, helping them to find information and access the services and support they need.

Lucy will be exploring how learning from the USA could be used to inform policy and practice development in the UK and to identify ways to develop, support and sustain our own kinship care ecosystem, so that kinship families here in England and Wales are able to thrive.

In England and Wales, there are more than double the number of children living in kinship care than in foster care, but support for kinship carers and the children they are raising remains insufficient, and often patchy across different localities.

Jean Stogden, who co-founded Grandparents Plus (which became Kinship) was a Churchill Fellow herself, and undertook her research in 1999, travelling to the USA to understand some of the ways that grandparent kinship carers were stepping up for their grandchildren, particularly children with African-American heritage. She went on to co-found Grandparents Plus with social entrepreneur Sir Michael Young two years later, determined to ensure that the wider role of family was better recognised, valued and supported when parents were unable to raise their children.

Our CEO Lucy being awarded this Fellowship is a really important continuation of Jean’s work and legacy and will build on Kinship’s experience of working with kinship carers to develop support services and programmes which meet kinship families’ unique needs.