Grandfather, kinship carer, roadshow co-creator

My partner and I are kinship carers to our 3 grandchildren in Doncaster. The children came to live with us in late 2017, just before Christmas. Our smallest one was 2-and-a-half when he came to us. We changed from being a family with 1 child to a family with 4. My partner and I are in our fifties and our children are all below the age of 16. We immediately hit the ground running. At the beginning we fostered and then after a little wrangling with our local authority we were finally granted a special guardianship order and a financial allowance.

As the children became more settled, we realised that we needed some extra support, for both the family and ourselves as individuals. I found out about Kinship via social media as I saw they needed kinship carers to take part in a study. I really enjoyed being part of the study and met various Kinship staff who told me about the other support Kinship offered.

The main reason we joined a Kinship peer support group was because we really wanted to meet people who were like us. We were already part of a fostering support group which my local authority ran but we felt like it didn’t really hit the spot.

The thing is, when you become a kinship carer, you lose friends. We lost friendships with people who we’d been close to for over 30 years. While they would go out for nice dinners, we would stay home and have to go to bed because we’re knackered. It can also get quite tricky with your children sometimes. One of our granddaughters, for example, loves her music and because she’s in her teens and we’re in our fifties you sometimes struggle to relate to each other. You also feel isolated from family because again you’re at a different stage of life compared to them. You end up being out of step with your friends, family and society. But the thing we realised when we started attending this group was that we were normal.

We now have somewhere where we can talk openly and honestly with people who have been through similar things. You soon realise in the group that whatever path you’ve taken, we’ve all lost somebody. We sadly lost a relationship with our son as he passed away and we realised we’re not alone in that experience. There are lots of people like us in society but we’re often hidden. The number of people raising a grandchild is staggering but you just don’t hear about us. Our support group, however, where everybody sees each other as equals, gives people a safe space to share, be seen and heard. I’ve learnt so much about other people’s experiences, as well as how they have been treated in their local authorities.

Since joining a Kinship support group we’ve made really good friends. When you become a kinship carer you just don’t have a great deal of time for yourself so these groups have now become our social life. The reality is that kinship carers are splintered. But with the help of these support groups, we are able to come together, support one another and campaign for change.

Kieron, who is self-employed and repairs heavy construction equipment, helped co-create an information roadshow for kinship carers which is visiting towns and cities in England up until March 2025.

He said: “I was invited to take part in co-creating an information roadshow with other kinship carers at workshops in Leeds, Liverpool and London. There were around 30 of us in the room but I was the only male carer!

“We broke out into subgroups and discussed what kinship carers would like to learn about at a roadshow, and decided that the key issues were family contact, attachment and trauma issues, education support and financial allowances.

“We wanted to empower kinship carers with information to help them become more determined to get the support they need. We also wanted to give carers time at the free lunch to interact together, make friends and get advice about peer support groups in their area. We wanted the roadshow to act as a doorway to support. I went to the Leeds roadshow and thought it was great and I learnt a number of new things which was helpful.”