Our services in Sunderland

What is Kinship Grants in Sunderland?

If you’re a kinship carer in Sunderland, we’re funded by the Ballinger Charitable Trust to help you to access charity grants for essentials.

Find out more about our work with the Ballinger Charitable Trust.

If you’re a special guardian

This means our Kinship Family Worker will connect with you when we receive a referral from Sunderland Council. We can only give you one-to-one support once we receive a referral.

The support we can give you depends on what you need. We’ll work with you to develop a plan to help you with the things that you feel are most urgent or where you have identified you would like support.

You’ll meet Elaine (Senior Programmes Worker) and she’ll work with you over 6 months to support your plan.

This could mean help with things like:

• if you’d like support to talk to your school about what your child needs – this could about a special educational needs and disabilities diagnosis
• accessing support from other organisations – if you or your kinship child has experienced bereavement for example
• getting access to therapeutic support through the adoption and special guardianship fund

These discussions are confidential, we are an independent charity.  If a safeguarding concern is raised we will talk you about what that means and our duty of care.

How do I access support?

We’ve been commissioned by Together for Children Sunderland to support special guardians who are referred from Sunderland council.

You need to contact the Viv.Sear@togetherforchildren.org.uk to discuss what support you can access.