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Kinship care cash should be a welfare benefit, says task group
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5 May 2009
Kinship care cash should be a welfare benefit, says task group
KINSHIP carers should get adequate cash from UK welfare benefits to bring up the children in their care - not from local authority allowances, according to a Scottish Government task group report.
The UK Benefits system urgently needs to be reviewed to reflect the needs of kinship carers so that they can receive an adequate income for maintaining the child, according to one of five task groups charged with taking forward the Scottish Government’s Fostering and Kinship Care Strategy launched in December 2007.
The Kinship Care Task Group “is clear that it is unacceptable for local authorities to provide income maintenance over any extended period for the care of children with kinship carers rather than the carers being able to receive universal UK benefits.”
And pressure on the UK Government’s Work and Pensions and Revenue and Customs – which is also emerging among kinship care organisations south of the border - must be sustained, urges the document.
A resolution of some of the anomalies of the benefits and allowances issues could make an enormous difference to kinship carers, it states.
“For the future we believe that more kinship carers should be supported by universal services and benefits so that the child has as ordinary a family life as possible. All work must address the needs of the whole child and ensure that kinship carers have the resources to meet those needs.”
Many kinship carers have found it a “hard blow” not to be receiving kinship care payments on a par with foster carers from 1 April 2008, as they had expected under a commitment of the 2007 Concordat, says the report.
But there have been “unforeseen negative consequences” of receiving allowances on the income of kinship carers already in receipt of a range of universal benefits, it concedes.
The Task Group’s report is bound to confirm fears that the Concordat pledge in December 2007 to give kinship carers extra financial help via local authorities would be much more costly to implement than originally thought.
Financial resources were initially earmarked for 2000 formally approved kinship carers in Scotland but the Task Group report makes clear that a further 7000 children are likely to be living in some form of kinship care, with practice information across Scotland showing this to be a “considerable underestimate”.
It highlights an explosion in the number of children living in kinship care informally with relatives and friends – a staggering 91 percent increase – and says there is an increasing number of families where parental substance problems was seriously affecting their capabilities to care for their children.
And it warns that the number of children placed with kinship carers is likely to continue to rise as further supports and services are developed for children in kinship care. However, the Scottish Government has already said that the new kinship allowances will be in line with foster care payments by 2011 – so long as the Scottish Government can agree with the UK Government that Scottish recipients will not lose out on welfare benefit cash.
Scottish Children and Early Years Minister Adam Ingram met his UK Government counterpart, Beverley Hughes, in July last year to call for improvements to the UK benefits and tax credits system in order to give parents more help with the costs of childcare and also to discuss the need for “further support” for kinship carers.
Although the two Ministers found “common ground” on the need for further financial support for all kinship carers, Mr Ingram said at the time that the UK benefits system includes “clear disadvantages” for kinship carers.
He also said then that it was “frustrating” that the Scottish Government does not yet have the powers to address these matters alone, therefore “it is vital that these concerns are addressed at a UK level so that appropriate action can be taken.”
Recent national recognition of the complexities of the benefits system, particularly for kinship carers, has been welcomed, as have the initiatives of the Scottish Government to resolve them with colleagues from the Department of Work and Pensions, says the report.
“It is very encouraging that the Government in Scotland has initiated discussions at Westminster with The Department of Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about the challenges faced by kinship carers trying to access benefits to support them in the care of the child. Similar issues are being raised by kinship care organisations across England and it is important that this pressure for change is sustained.”
Universal services and allowances should be available for all kinship carers so that they do not experience poverty or an absence of the services that they need to ensure the well-being of the child and to provide secure care for the child, according to the report.
Meanwhile, there are likely to be many more kinship carers who have no legal orders in respect of the children yet provide long-term care to children whose parents are unable, for a variety of reasons, to care for their children.
Formal intervention in the lives of children and carers should be reserved for those situations where the security and safety of the child requires it.
And where children do not require to be formally looked after, the local authority may need to provide financial support from time to time in terms of their responsibilities to children “in need”.
It is important that these carers also have opportunities to receive services to support them in the care of the child, says the report.But it is unacceptable for local authorities to provide income maintenance over any extended period for the care of children with kinship carers rather than the carers being able to receive universal UK benefits, it argued.
Exploration of paying kinship allowances through the UK tax and welfare benefit systems was among the recommendations of the 2006 Scottish Executive-commissioned study of kinship care conducted by Jane Aldgate, Professor of Social Care at The Open University, and Miranda McIntosh. Jane Aldgate was a member of the Kinship Care Task Group.
Moving Forward in Kinship and Foster Care