Find out how you can commission our services in your local area to support kinship carers.
Resources from Kinship Knowledge Exchange: Building the kinship care system that families need
Thank you for attending our Kinship Knowledge Exchange on Tuesday 14 July 2026. On this page you’ll find the slide decks from the day, as well as some other helpful content, which we’ve also made available for those who couldn’t join us on the day.
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On this page
Click on the link below to take you to the section you'd like to read:
Download the slide deck
We’ve compiled the slides from everyone’s presentations. Download the deck now.
The speakers you heard from
Here’s a quick reminder of all the different sessions and who spoke at them.
Welcome
Dr Beverley Barnett-Jones, Trustee, Kinship and Nurture Futures Co-Founder
Tim Fisher, Practice Lead Kinship
Dr Jahnine Davis, National Kinship Care Ambassador
The North East Lincolnshire Kinship Zone
Ann-Marie Matson, Director of Children’s Services, North East Lincolnshire Council
Lisa February, Kinship Carer, North East Lincolnshire Council
Yvette Stanley, National Director, Social Care, Ofsted
Emma Davies, Deputy Director, Adoption, Family Justice and Alternatives to Care, Department for Education
Dr Lucy Peake, CEO, Kinship
Dr Beverley Barnett-Jones, Trustee, Kinship
Tim Fisher, Practice Lead, Kinship
Gemma Carroll, Associate Director of Comms, Campaigns and Marketing, Kinship
Workshops
With Kinship Zone local authorities, North East Lincolnshire and Medway
Facilitated by Tim Fisher, Practice Lead, Kinship.
With local authorities and kinship care experienced young people
Facilitated by Fiona Summers, Head of Programmes, Kinship.
With Foundations funded Navigator local authorities and the Centre for Evidence and Implementation
Facilitated by Anam Raja, Research Manager, Kinship
With Exeter University and CoramBAAF
Dr Lucy Peake, CEO, Kinship
How Kinship can support you
At Kinship, we help local authorities, practitioners and others in the sector to better support the kinship carers they work with. Find out how we can support you.
- Join our Professionals’ Network to meet fellow practitioners and researchers and keep up to date with best practice. Find out more and register now.
- View our latest research and find out what improvements we’re calling for in law, policy and practice.
- Information on the kinship local offer, why you must involve kinship carers in developing your offer, and how Kinship can help
- Find out how to commission our services
- Visit Kinship Compass to find out the number of kinship carers in your area and free support you can signpost
Commission our services in your area
We are the only national charity directly delivering Navigator programmes to kinship carers across England and Wales at scale, co-designed with kinship carers themselves.
Kinship Connected and Kinship Reach are structured, evidence-based Navigator programmes providing intensive, relational one-to-one support for kinship families regardless of legal arrangement.
Built on strengths-based and trauma-informed practice, our Navigators work alongside kinship carers over time, building the trusted, sustained relationships that help families navigate complexity, access the right support, and avoid reaching crisis point.
Both programmes are strongly aligned to the Foundations Practice Guide Principles, developed to assist senior leaders and commissioners to commission and develop effective services tailored to the unique needs of kinship families.
As well as the tailored one-to-one and peer support provided as part of Kinship Connected and Kinship Reach, commissioned local authorities also receive priority access to Kinship’s Advice Line for all of their kinship carers, ensuring specialist support is available across the breadth of your kinship population.
Contact: commissions@kinship.org.uk
Designing your kinship care local offer
We are also able to offer tailored consultancy for local authorities developing or improving their kinship care local offer – enabling co-design that is truly meaningful, rooted in lived experience, and shaped with local families, not just for them.
In addition to drawing on diagnostic insights from our national work on local offer practice, we support local authorities to reflect on strengths, gaps, and stretch innovations.
We also offer the opportunity for co-facilitation and input from kinship care-experienced facilitators, ensuring your co-production is grounded, relational, and credible. Our approach is collaborative, responsive, and tailored to your local authority context, supporting you to develop a kinship care local offer that is trusted, visible, and truly valuable to the families it serves.
Contact: commissions@kinship.org.uk
Bring shared reading into your local kinship offer
Funded shared reading support for kinship families
BookTrust and Kinship have developed free resources to help kinship families use stories to build connection, explore emotions and identity, and create joyful shared experiences. The Kinship website includes practical advice, carefully selected reading lists, video story sessions and activities for children aged 0–14.
We would love to hear from local authority kinship teams interested in embedding shared reading within their child-centred local offer. BookTrust has funding available to support this work, including access to Story Explorers, our early years shared-reading programme co-created with kinship families.
Contact getinvolved@booktrust.org.uk to explore how BookTrust could support kinship families in your area.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about Kinship or how we can support you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Email us at commissions@kinship.org.uk.
Related content
Learn about Kinship’s research, informed by the experiences of kinship carers, and see how we use this evidence to call for change in law, policy, and practice.
Independent information, support and advice for you. Because, we know kinship care is complex and confusing. Use Kinship Compass to discover what support is available to you, both locally and nationally, to help you navigate your kinship journey.
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