Information, training and support for kinship carers

What’s happening now?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently progressing through Parliament, includes a new legal duty on local authorities to publish a kinship local offer, strengthening the requirement introduced in kinship care statutory guidance published in October 2024. This replaces the previous requirement to publish a family and friends care policy or similar, and is accompanied by more comprehensive guidance about what areas this should cover and how it should be delivered to improve information and signposting to kinship carers.

There are some signals that kinship carers’ experiences with local authority support and information are improving, albeit from a low base. We know from our annual surveys that 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. Similarly, kinship carers in 2024 were nearly 6pp more likely to say that the provision of information from their local authority was excellent or good than in 2023, and nearly 8pp less likely to say it was poor or very poor. However, this still means that nearly half of kinship carers (47%) rate the information provided by their local authority about kinship care as poor or very poor.

Kinship is continuing to deliver a national training and support service for all kinship carers, funded by the Department for Education until March 2026 and with the possibility of extension until March 2027. This includes a series of online and in-person training and events designed to provide free advice, tips and practical tools for those who are new to kinship care and to those who have been kinship carers for years.

The Department for Education also funds Kinship to deliver the national peer support service, offering kinship carers a way to meet other kinship carers, share experiences and exchange advice.

What’s happened previously?

In Stable Homes, Built on Love, the previous government committed to investing in the delivery of a national offer of support and training for all kinship carers. This followed a recommendation from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care that all local authorities should develop peer support and training for all kinship carers. After a competitive tender process, Kinship was awarded a contract by the Department for Education to develop an information, training and support programme for all kinship carers in England from April 2024.

The National Kinship Care Strategy also celebrated Kinship’s work to establish more than 145 peer support groups across England and the role of the groups in building community and relationships for kinship carers. Funding has been awarded to Kinship to continue building and strengthening peer support groups  until at least March 2026.

Our verdict

We’re pleased to see a new legal duty placed on local authorities in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to deliver a kinship local offer, strengthening the reframed requirement in statutory guidance. We had consistently called on the government to reinforce the requirement for local authorities to provide visible, accessible and up-to-date information for kinship carers on the support available to them. This is crucial given that a third of kinship carers rate the information provided about kinship care by their local authority as ‘very poor’, and particularly because only 7% told us in 2023 that they had seen their local authority’s existing family and friends care policy which local authorities have been required to deliver since 2011.

However, as outlined by Kinship’s Associate Director of Policy and Public Affairs when providing oral evidence to the Education Committee in February 2025, the local offer’s impact will also be to magnify the lack of support available to kinship families, particularly those with informal arrangements or where a legal order was made in private proceedings. The kinship local offer is being introduced in a very different context to that of other local offers for children with SEND or for care leavers, where there are more well-established systems of both statutory and wider support to signpost kinship carers to. It’s vital that the government and local authorities improve the level of financial, practical and emotional support available to kinship families alongside developing their local offers as otherwise, “there isn’t a huge amount of point signposting to support which doesn’t exist”.

A lack of independent advice, especially at the point of becoming a kinship carer, can leave kinship carers vulnerable to being exploited and unsure about the best option for them to pursue to support their new family. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has highlighted previously how special guardians were sometimes given incorrect advice and information by their local authorities. As highlighted by Foundations in their survey of local authority support, “kinship carers may commit to care arrangements that limit their access to support without being aware of these implications”.

The previous government’s commitment to invest in a national offer of training and (peer) support services for kinship carers reflected a significant win for our #ValueOurLove campaign, which continues to call for equalised access to high-quality training and support between kinship carers and foster carers. Delivery of a national offer of training, advice and information is helping to deliver consistent and high-quality support for kinship carers of all types. This is crucial as only 2 in 10 kinship carers told us in our 2022 annual survey that they’d received any preparation support before or shortly after their child moved in.

What should happen next?

It is vital that the government continues to invest in independent services which provide information, training and support to kinship carers. They are providing a lifeline to many kinship carers – including those with informal arrangements – who are otherwise isolated and struggling without the information and support they need.

All local authorities should ensure they provide up-to-date, accessible and visible information about the support available to kinship families of all types through their kinship local offers and elsewhere. This should include signposting to support from Kinship, including our national offer of training and support and Kinship Compass – our tool to help kinship carers discover the support available to them locally, including support groups, events and workshops, free legal clinics and food banks.

Local authorities should work at pace to develop and improve their kinship local offers and work alongside kinship carers to do so. They should recognise the diversity of kinship families and the need for some services to be attuned to specific cohorts (e.g. young kinship carers or those from minoritised communities). The National Kinship Care Ambassador should support and challenge local authorities to deliver this (see ‘Local authority practice’).

All kinship carers should be offered free and independent advice from the moment they are considering becoming kinship carers and throughout their journey. This should include guidance on the different kinship care arrangements and their implications for access to support, and ensure kinship carers receive the welfare benefits they are entitled to given their particular family arrangements.