Gaille McCann

1
Gaille McCann

• Reducing the financial burden for carers

2
Parenting and drugs

• Hidden Harm Next steps proposes time limited
  contracts with regular testing
• Adults stable in treatment may still be poor
  parents
• Our focus should be on the experience of children
  not adults
• We need to be able to evidence when enough is
  enough but then plan rather than react

3
Caring for children the question of removing
them from home

• When risk factors outweigh protective factors
• When children cannot be safely cared for
• When they are exposed to danger, trauma, adverse
  experience

4
What are the options?

• Children being looked after and accommodated by
  the local authority
• Temporary foster care
• Permanent removal and adoption
• Childrens units
• Kinship care
• Whats the evidence on outcomes for children

5
Can we prevent this happening?

• Local support services for families
• Focused use of Early Years Services and Family
  Centres
• Intensive Family Support eg Glasgows
  multi-agency PACT Services
• Managed risks
• Community kinship networks
• Respite care
• The supportive school
• Children identified and supported
• Targeted intervention through Additional Support
  Plans

6
Kinship care what can it provide?

• Flexible family based support
• Emotional continuity for children
• Avoidance of public care
• Outcomes As good an option as public care and
  often better

7
The impacts on grandparents and relatives

• Significant numbers of grandparents
• Giving up work to look after children
• Financial hardship
• Physical strain, particularly with age
• Abandoning retirement plans
• Depending on benefits or drain on savings
• Stress, tiredness, anxiety for the future

8
Supporting Kinship Carers

• Practical support for grandparents and relatives
  eg community services, respite.
• Financial support at a level that increases and
  not replaces income
• Need for consistency in practice

9
Whats the cost of doing nothing?

• More children in public care
• Stigma
• Uncertainty about future
• Poor educational outcomes
• Long term risk of social exclusion,
  marginalisation and poverty

10
Kinship Care Current Position

• Variety of approaches across LAs
• No agreement on cost of kinship care schemes
• Movement/campaign to pay a decent weekly
  allowance for kinship care
• Shifting from institutional care models to allow
  resources to be re-examined

11
Kinship Care Way Forward

• Prof Aldgates Research Autumn 2006
• Use research as a baseline to develop national
  strategy for Kinship Care