The research found that children living with family and friends carers often had emotional or behavioral problems, special education needs, or disabilities before placement. These issues occurred at much higher rates than in the general child population. Many of the carers also had their own health issues, stress levels twice that of the general population, and difficulties meeting the needs of the children in their care. Local authorities often failed to provide adequate support to the carers and children and were reluctant to classify kinship care arrangements as formal foster placements, despite the child's needs. Less than half of local authorities had published a family and friends care policy as required.

1. Factsheet: Family Rights Group
research into family & friends care
New research by advice charity Family Rights Group, and Oxford University’s Centre for
Family Law and Policy, which includes: a survey of more than 490 carers; 95 in-depth
interviews; a government analysis survey and a Freedom of Information request, shows:
Children living with family and friends carers usually suffer multiple adversities before
being placed with their carers (Source: Internet Survey, table 4.5, p.30).
These include:
• 38% of carers were raising a kinship child with emotional and behavioural problems
• 21% had special educational needs
• 12% a learning disability
• 6% a physical disability
Proportionally these are far higher than the figures for children with disabilities or special
needs within the general population (Source: JH, Child wellbeing, p16).
• 85% of the children had manifested difficulties at the time of placement
• 26% were functioning in the abnormal range
This is more than twice that expected in the general child population
The report paints an equally depressing picture for those children’s carers.
• 26% of internet survey carers had a long-term illness or disability (Source: IS, Section
p34)
• 65% of interviewed carers were assessed as having raised stress levels, twice that in the
general population, with 38% currently exhibiting high levels of stress. Stress was clearly
correlated with the degree of difficulty the child was presenting (Source: JH, impact of
caring, p25)
• For many, becoming a family and friends carer had had a negative impact on their social
life (72%), on their relationship with their partner (40%), on their health and well-being
(39%) and on their self-confidence (17%) (Source: IS, table 8.1, p87)
• Carers had more children in their household on average than other families in the study
(1.97 vs 1.34) (Source: UnderSoc, Household composition, p9)
• One third (34%) of carers were single (Source: IS, Section 4.8, p33)
• In a quarter (24%) of families the carers are also raising their own children (Source: IS,
Table 4.7, p32)
• Many of the families who took in kinship care children already had considerable additional
needs of their own. 21% were already raising a child of their own who had additional
needs. 14% cared for an adult with a disability, and 5% cared for both an adult with a
disability and a child of their own with additional needs. (Source: IS, Section 4.7, p31)
• Over a third (38%) of carers had to give up work (either because they’d taken early
retirement and/or lost their job or had to give up work) to take on the kin children (internet
survey)
The amount and type of support carers received from local authorities appeared to
bear no relationship to the child’s or carer’s needs.
The report shows:
• 44% of internet survey carers said that they had received no practical help from the local
authority (Source: IS, Table 7.1, p75)
• 95% of interviewed carers identified at least one form of support they had needed, but not
received. Most mentioned several (Source:JH, Section: support gaps, p71)
• Carers felt they had significant unmet needs (Source: IS, Table 7.5, p82):
o for emotional support (52%)
o help with the child’s behavioural and emotional difficulties (44%)

2. o respite care (40%)
o support with the child’s family contact (35%)
o family mediation (18%).
• The great majority – 72% of interviewed carers (Source: JH, Section Conclusion, p85)
and 71% of internet survey carers – of carers rated the support they had received from
the local authority as poor or very poor (Source: IS, Table 7.2, p79)
Local authorities were very reluctant to treat kinship arrangements as statutory foster
placements and their decisions appeared to be unrelated to the needs of the child.
There was no correlation between foster care status and the level of difficulty the child was
manifesting. The majority of children in interviewed families who were categorised as
challenging (59%) were never treated as ‘looked after’ children while with their kinship carer
(Source: JH, p86: “56% of children deemed to be challenging at any time (33 of 56; 59%),
were never treated as looked after children while they were living with their kinship carers.”)
• 85% of arrangements which were treated as foster placements from the start for
interviewed families involved either children who had been looked after by the local
authority immediately prior to moving to kin or who were subject to care proceedings.
Those taking on children in other circumstances were extremely unlikely to be treated as
foster carers (Source: JH, p87)
Local authorities do not appear to have helped carers by signposting them to
independent sources of information
• 77% of the internet survey carers felt they did not have enough understanding of the legal
options and the implications for support to make an informed decision (Source: IS,
Section 5.6, p41)
• Only one in six carers had been given any information about different legal options, where
local authorities had been involved (Source: JH, Section, Making informed decisions
about legal status, p89)
• Where the child had been the subject of legal proceedings, 40% of internet survey carers
had no legal representation (Source: IS, table 5.8, p43)
The Freedom of Information request:
The Government published Family and Friends Care: Statutory Guidance for Local
Authorities in March 2011, requiring every local authority to publish and publicise a policy on
its approach to promoting and supporting the needs of children living with family and friends
carers by the end of September 2011.
Family Rights Group, on behalf of the Kinship Care Alliance, sent a Freedom of Information
request in October 2011 to the Director of Children’s Services in every local authority in
England, requesting a copy of their Family and Friends Care policy and asking them how the
policy had been developed.
• 45% of English local authorities did not have a published family and friends care policy,
more than five months after the deadline set in the statutory guidance
Analysis of 52 local family and friends care policies found that:
• Only four in ten (38%) provided information on discretionary support for children in family
and friends care who are ‘in need’. Few authorities make clear in their policy their own
approach towards the discretionary support they will offer, or help carers to find out
whether they might qualify for support
• Only a quarter (26%) of policies stated that authorities had consulted local partners and
only one third (34%) stated they had consulted family and friends carers or children and
young people
• Almost half (42%) failed to make reference to the key principle that support should be
based on the needs of the child rather than the child’s legal status
• Fewer than half provided information on the rights and voice of children (46%), of carers
(40%), or of parents (37%)
• Just three in ten (29%) policies made any mention of paying carers’ legal fees
• Fewer than half (44%) provided signposting information to local services