Kinship care leave

Current status

There are no current plans to introduce statutory paid employment leave for kinship carers.

In the interim, Kinship’s Kinship Friendly Employer scheme is encouraging and supporting employers to introduce paid leave policies for their own kinship carer employees. To date, we have worked alongside trailblazing employers including Tesco, John Lewis Partnership, B&Q, cardfactory and Lloyds Banking Group.

Alongside the National Kinship Care Strategy, the previous Government delivered new guidance for employers on how they can support kinship carers at work. This sets out best practice for supporting kinship carers at work, including how to adapt internal HR policies and improve cultures of support, and signposts to our Kinship Friendly Employer scheme.

Following a commitment in the National Kinship Care Strategy, the Department for Education is also introducing its own pay and leave offer for their kinship carer staff.

The government’s Employment Rights Bill does not contain provisions to deliver employment leave, although amendment NC14 tabled by Steve Darling MP at committee stage seeks to include this as a new clause.

Our verdict

In 2023, the Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy committed to “explore additional workplace entitlements” for kinship carers and provide an update in the National Kinship Care Strategy. Therefore, it’s particularly disappointing that no further commitments were made in the Strategy or since to introduce a right to statutory pay and leave for kinship carers and provide the crucial employment support which kinship carers need, as called for by our #ValueOurLove campaign.

Our Forced Out report, published in June 2023, revealed that more than 8 in 10 kinship carers had been forced to give up work permanently or reduce their hours after taking on the care of a child, unnecessarily pushing valuable workers out of the labour market and plunging kinship families into poverty. A period of paid leave would not only allow carers to better support children and give them the time they need to settle into their new family environment, but would also create financial stability for kinship families and prevent carers from having to leave the labour market unnecessarily. It would also ensure vital nurses, teachers and support workers are kept active in our hospitals, schools and communities.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care also recommended that paid leave on a par with adoption leave should be introduced for special guardians and kinship carers with a child arrangements order where the child would otherwise be in care, and a similar recommendation was also made by the House of Lords Children and Families Act 2014 Committee.

We’re pleased to see the new guidance for employers signpost to our own Kinship Friendly Employer scheme. This will help encourage employers to grow awareness of and support for kinship carers in their workplace, and backs up the suggestion made in Stable Homes, Built on Love that “businesses can ask themselves whether they have employment policies in place to support kinship carers”. 

What should happen next

We want to see the Department for Business and Trade work closely with the Department for Education and introduce a statutory right to paid kinship care leave, at least on a par with adoption leave and pay.

Published alongside the Employment Rights Bill in October 2024, Next Steps to Make Work Pay details plans to deliver a review of the parental and carers leave systems. At minimum, the terms of reference for these reviews must include an assessment of the value of introducing paid leave for kinship carers. Introducing kinship care leave would also align extremely well with other initiatives to support people with parental and caring responsibilities to remain in the workplace when they would like to, including flexible working provisions included within the Employment Rights Bill and the introduction of leave entitlements for other specific groups such as unpaid carers.

Family Network Pilots should include testing of how local authorities can support kinship carers with navigating changes to their employment, such as compensating for lost hours at work and helping with securing more flexible working arrangements. This will be particularly important for informal kinship carers who do not have a legal order securing their family arrangement and may not benefit directly from future statutory entitlements to paid leave.

At Kinship, we will continue our work engaging with employers to develop our Kinship Friendly Employers scheme and encourage organisations to adopt paid leave and other supportive policies ahead of potential future rights for kinship carers, Many kinship carers who might not benefit from a statutory paid leave policy on a par with adoption leave would still be well-served by greater understanding of and support with other workplace entitlements, including the option of shorter periods of leave, altered working hours or more flexible working arrangements.

Other governmental departments should follow the pioneering example of the Department for Education and introduce their own paid leave policies for their kinship carer employees and lead by example.