Becoming a sibling kinship carer

Rose, a 25-year-old kinship carer from Birmingham, shares what it means to her to be a sibling kinship carer.

In June 2025 I woke up to several missed phone calls from my mum. After I’d heard about the full situation, social workers asked me if I would take in my sister. I was the only option. We said of course and immediately made the three-and-a-half-hour trip from Birmingham to the Northeast of England to collect her. After a week sorting out necessary details with social services, we were finally able to take her home with us.

When I became a kinship carer, I was only given the option to take a few months of sick pay leave. I have since had to hand in notice to my job because of the stress and lack of support. I ended up losing a lot of weight and I am suffering mentally. My family now has to survive on benefits. We are also in debt. It’s baffling and angers me about the lack of support. As a former social worker, I hate to think how many other kinship carers are suffering and struggling through this. It’s wildly unfair. However, we are so grateful to our community and our ‘village’ stepping in to pay for things we just couldn’t afford.

Being a sibling kinship carer is not only challenging financially but also very complex emotionally. When you don’t have ‘parents’, who do you turn to when learning how to parent? I used to be the fun big sister who would save up to be able to take her out on day trips and treat her with activities and sweets. Now I can’t do that and it’s hard to hear her sometimes say ‘but you used to be so fun’. It’s also hard finding the balance between being like a parent and a big sister.

One of the major things that helped was Kinship’s Someone Like Me phone service. I was able to speak 1:1 with another kinship carer who understood what I was going through. We were able to think about solutions to challenges I had and do practice conversations about sensitive topics that I needed to speak to my sister about. It’s impossible to do this with somebody who hasn’t walked in your shoes. I’ve also been to the Kinship Roadshows and I attend a Kinship peer support group. We have a WhatsApp group and it’s so helpful to be able to pop a question in there and support. I now want to volunteer with Kinship too.

Whenever she wants to speak about our mum and her feelings I always just sit and listen. Although I have my own experiences, I don’t want to share them like a sister would usually do and potentially retraumatise her. I want to be her kinship carer and know that she can tell me anything. She feels safe with me. So much so that she pushes the boundaries, sometimes rebelling and testing me if I really will never tell her to leave.

She is thriving in school. She reads a book a day and is an incredible dancer. She is so intelligent and doing amazing in all her subjects. I think she is so sharp because she has experienced such trauma and been forced into protecting herself like an adult would. It’s like speaking to a 30-year-old. For me it’s so important to try and give her the childhood that I never had. There is a lack of mental health services which is also challenging but the school has been fantastic referring her where they can.

One of our favourite things to do is sing at the top of our lungs in the car on the way to school. She even told me the other day that we’re like the real Lilo and Nani from the Lilo and Stitch film. I adore rolling down the window and shouting ‘I love you’ to her at drop off and embarrassing her like a big sister would. She always shouts back ‘I love you too’.

I also love seeing kinship care represented on TV and film. We need this awareness. I want more people to know they’re kinship carers. We need the voices of all the 141,000 kinship children to be heard, then it doesn’t feel like it’s just me screaming into the void by myself.

Being a sibling kinship carer is different because I’ve gone through it. I lived in that house. I had that childhood. As a music lover the song ‘Eldest Daughter’ by Taylor Swift really resonates with me. The lyrics say: ‘Every eldest daughter was the first lamb to the slaughter”. I feel the same way about Adele’s song ‘Easy On Me’. They make me feel so emotional but really describe my experience and make me feel seen and understood.

I love the moments where we’re all brushing our teeth together as a family – my partner, my sister, myself and of course our dog who is basically Stich. People ask me if I’m ever jealous about my sister having something I never had. I never do. I just want her to be happy, safe, thriving and loved. I don’t have to worry about her because I know I’m doing the best I can for her. One day she will turn around and say thank you for being there.