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Thousands of children living in kinship care are being denied urgent mental health support despite experiencing significant childhood trauma, according to new research published by Kinship.
The charity’s latest poll of more than 1,000 kinship carers found that more than six in 10 carers (60.1%) believe the children in their care are failing to access the specialist mental health support they urgently need. Kinship warned that without appropriate therapeutic intervention, many families risk reaching crisis point, potentially leading to children entering the care system unnecessarily.
Kinship carers – often grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles or family friends – are currently raising around 132,000 children in England when parents are unable to do so. The charity said many of these children have experienced trauma, separation and loss comparable to children in foster or adoptive placements, yet support provision remains inconsistent and inadequate.
The survey found that 66% of kinship carers said they were struggling to manage children’s challenging behaviours due largely to a lack of specialist and intensive support. This represents a significant increase from 52% recorded in Kinship’s 2022 annual survey.
Concerns about placement stability also emerged strongly from the findings. More than one in eight carers (13%) said they were worried about whether they could continue caring for their kinship children, with 71% of those citing difficulties managing social, emotional and mental health needs.
The findings come against the backdrop of the government’s recent consultation on reforms to mental health and wellbeing support for adoptive families and eligible kinship families, including proposed changes to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF). Kinship argues the proposals fail to reflect the distinctive circumstances of kinship families and do not go far enough in addressing the scale of therapeutic need.
According to the charity, only 11% of eligible kinship families currently receive therapy funded through the ASGSF, compared with around half of adoptive families. Kinship also highlighted recent reductions in available funding, including the lowering of the annual therapy cap from £5,000 to £3,000 per child and the removal of separate funding for specialist assessments.
The survey also revealed continued reliance on overstretched statutory services. Twelve per cent of carers said a child in their care was receiving support through Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), while nearly a quarter accessed support through schools or colleges. Nine per cent reported children were on waiting lists for support, and 10% said referrals were currently being made.
Lucy Peake said the current system was “not working” for kinship families and warned that carers could not “make children’s pain vanish” without appropriate specialist services.
She said the government must ensure all children in kinship care can access therapeutic support tailored to their specific experiences and circumstances, adding that the futures of “thousands of children” depended on meaningful reform.
Kinship is calling on ministers to involve kinship families directly in the design of future support arrangements to ensure services are both accessible and responsive to the complex realities faced by carers and children living in kinship arrangements.
