Local authority practice

Current status

There are some signals that kinship carers’ experiences with support from the local authority is improving, albeit from and still at a low base. Kinship carers in 2024 were 8pp more likely to rate the support received by their local authority as excellent or good than in 2023, and 7pp less likely to say it was poor or very poor.

The previous Government committed in the National Kinship Care Strategy to delivering new statutory guidance on kinship care in Spring 2024, replacing the existing Family and Friends Care guidance last updated in 2011. Following a delay as a result of the General Election, this new guidance was published on Friday 11 October 2024. The guidance “does not place any new statutory requirements on local authorities” but “repositions previous guidance into a clear framework supported by updated factual information and legal guidance”. In particular, it emphasises the involvement of family networks in decision-making about a child’s safety and wellbeing, confirms that local authorities should support kinship foster carers if necessary to attain the National Minimum Standards and consider their situations differently to mainstream foster carers, and introduces a kinship local offer with new guidance to replace the existing local family and friends care policy requirement.

The Department for Education appointed Jahnine Davis as the new National Kinship Care Ambassador in October 2024 following a successful recruitment round over the summer. On her first official day in post, Jahnine joined the Minister at a meeting of a Kinship peer support group in South East London. Committed to within the National Kinship Care Strategy, the Ambassador “advocates for kinship children and carers across government and works directly with local authorities to improve services”.

Stable Homes, Built on Love outlined plans to introduce Practice Guides to set out the best evidenced approaches for achieving the outcomes set within the Children’s Social Care National Framework. Foundations published the Practice Guide for kinship care on Monday 14 October to cover Outcome 2 (children and young people are supported by their family network).

The National Kinship Care Strategy noted that Ofsted inspectors would receive additional bespoke training around kinship care and would review published guidance to ensure references to kinship care are clear and that local authorities’ strengths and weaknesses in kinship care practice are captured in their inspection reports. Since then, some very minor changes have been made to Ofsted’s inspection guidance to include reference to “kinship” or “kinship care” where this wasn’t present before.

The National Kinship Care Strategy also noted that ongoing work to introduce a new Early Career Framework for social workers would set out the skills and knowledge needed to support kinship families well, and that practitioners will be supported to share best practice around kinship care through events and forums, including in areas such as carer identification and assessment.

Our verdict

New statutory guidance is welcome; previous guidance was outdated and failed to capture the current policy context and focus on kinship care.

In particular, we’re pleased to see a reaffirmed requirement, through a kinship local offer, for local authorities to provide visible, accessible and up-to-date information for kinship carers on the support available to them. This is something we have consistently called for the new guidance to reinforce and is crucial given that nearly half of kinship carers rate the information provided by their local authority as ‘very poor’. A new local kinship offer requirement should help to ensure that all types of kinship carers understand the support available to them from the local authority and elsewhere, and we look forward to working with local authorities and kinship carers across England to make this a reality. 

However, kinship families need much more than updated statutory guidance and a refreshed requirement to deliver what should already be in place. Local authorities have been required since 2011 to deliver a family and friends care policy promoting and supporting the needs of children living with kinship carers, regardless of the type of arrangement. But last year, only 7% told us last year that they had seen their local authority’s existing family and friends care policy. 

Adapting practice around the application of the fostering National Minimum Standards for kinship foster carers is broadly welcome; if children can’t live with their parents and enter the care system, it’s right that we prioritise kinship care options with relatives and friends when in their best interests, and practice should recognise the different needs, strengths and circumstances between kinship and mainstream fostering. However, existing legislation and guidance is clear that placement decisions must ‘give preference to’ those connected to the child, and application of the Standards shouldn’t derail nor were they designed to supersede that placement principle.

Given our evidence which reveals how progression to kinship arrangements outside of the care system has stalled despite already growing numbers of children in kinship foster care, it is important that we get the policy sequencing right (see ‘Building a new kinship care system‘). That means ensuring support is there for kinship families before incentivising placing more children in kinship foster care arrangements and a system which isn’t designed for their unique circumstances.

We welcome the appointment of Jahnine Davis as National Kinship Care Ambassador who brings a wealth of valuable lived and professional experience to the role. The Ambassador role will help to improve local authority information and support, and ensure that kinship carers are involved in helping to shape the services they and their children receive. However, unlike other areas of children’s social care, practice in kinship care is less well developed and approaches can vary considerably between – and even within – different local authorities. This will present challenges for the role, especially given the current workforce and financial pressures facing local authorities which makes embedding new ways of working more challenging.

Foundations’ publication of a Kinship Care Practice Guide is a welcome and important step in recognising best practice in supporting kinship families, at a time when kinship care awareness and recognition amongst professionals is growing. Its recommendations echo many of those we have pushed local authorities to consider, including specialist support to help kinship carers navigate and access support, reflected in our own support and services for kinship carers, and offering a financial allowance to increase placement permanency and reduce disruption.

We welcome new training for Ofsted inspectors. This should ensure they can scrutinise and investigate local authorities’ support and practice around kinship care more effectively; this must be reflected clearly and visibly in their inspection reports. However, it’s unfortunate that the Strategy doesn’t go much further to consider the inspectorate given the role Ofsted play in supporting and challenging local authority practice with kinship families.

What should happen next

Local authorities should work alongside their kinship carers and local peer support groups to build a strong kinship local offer, promoted widely, and the National Kinship Care Ambassador must hold local authorities to account and challenge them to fulfil this requirement.  

We want to see Ofsted significantly enhance the attention paid to kinship care practice and support within its inspections and undertake a thematic review of its inspection reports to support this work, and will continue to encourage Ofsted to consider establishing a separate judgement for kinship care within its inspection framework for local authority children’s services, similar to the recent (re)introduction of this for care leavers. This would align the inspection framework with the new National Framework, giving sufficient weight to considerations around kinship care and supporting family networks. It is crucial that Ofsted moves with the Department for Education to present a unified picture to local authority leaders on the prioritisation of kinship care and support for family networks given its role as a critical lever of policy and practice change for children’s services.

We look forward to working with the Kinship Care Ambassador to ensure the insight from our work in partnership with local authorities helps more children’s services teams deliver the kind of practice which kinship carers want to see. Given the above, the role should have a strong focus on ensuring all local authorities deliver the essentials well, with priorities aligned to key objectives with the National Kinship Care Strategy. In particular, the Ambassador should help local authorities to ensure they provide up-to-date and visible information for all types of kinship carer about the support available to them, as part of the reaffirmed requirement within new kinship care statutory guidance.

Further practice guidance around kinship care should be built on existing research and evidence in supporting kinship carers, such as work commissioned by the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board including ‘Key elements of a special guardianship support service’ and ‘Developing good practice in financially supporting special guardians’. It should also address some of the challenges highlighted by specialist social workers who practice in kinship care, especially given its unique mix of skills and knowledge which draw from elements of both child protection and mainstream fostering practice. This includes improving social workers’ delivery of high-quality support plans tailored to the unique needs of each child, and in offering advice or help with parental contact – this can be particularly difficult for kinship families to navigate given existing very complex and challenging family relationships and especially in the context of adversarial court processes.

Where these do not exist already, local authorities should consider establishing specialist kinship teams with the breadth of skills necessary to deliver high-quality social work support; this should be encouraged by the new Government and the National Kinship Care Ambassador. Many local authorities have already developed specialist teams who are delivering pioneering support for kinship carers, and Kinship offers a network which brings together professionals working in kinship care to share good practice and learn from each other.

The membership of the National Practice Group should be extended to include additional representation from those with expertise in kinship care, including from lived and professional experience, that matches the strength of the commitment to supporting family networks within the National Framework and the National Kinship Care Strategy.

The UK Government must also ensure local authorities have the core, long-term funding they need to deliver reform and pioneer new ways of working with kinship families; current workforce and financial pressures make the recalibration of services, practice and culture all the more difficult. Indeed, The Department for Education itself identifies that local authority financial challenges is a critical risk to the delivery of essential support services and reforms across children’s social care.