In the realm of child welfare, the concept of kinship care has garnered increasing attention in both policy and practice. In England & Wales, there is a growing recognition that the most appropriate response to family crisis or breakdown is often to place children within their familial network, rather than in unrelated foster care. At the heart of these kinship care arrangements, grandparents frequently emerge as central and stabilising figures. Their commitment, often provided with quiet resilience and limited support, plays a vital role in safeguarding the welfare and development of vulnerable children.
While many grandparents take up caregiving responsibilities informally, others engage with the legal system in more structured ways. This duality, involving both informal and formal pathways, offers a rich but complex landscape in which family law, social policy, and lived experience intersect. Understanding the legal, emotional and practical challenges that grandparents face in this role is crucial to developing more supportive frameworks and policies.
An Overview of Kinship Care in England and Wales
Kinship care refers to arrangements where children live with relatives or close family friends instead of their birth parents. This can arise for various reasons, including parental substance misuse, mental health difficulties, incarceration, or death. Often, these arrangements are made quickly and under duress, requiring immediate action from extended family members to provide a safe and stable home.
In England & Wales, there is no singular legal category named “kinship care”; instead, the law recognises different types of arrangements that fall under this broad umbrella. Some occur through private family agreements, while others are formalised through the Family Court.
The Children’s Act 1989 remains the cornerstone of legislation in this area. Under this Act, emphasis is placed on the child’s welfare being the court’s paramount consideration and encourages local authorities to look within the wider family network before considering other forms of care.
Informal and Formal Kinship Care Arrangements
Kinship care can be broadly divided into two categories: informal and formal arrangements. Informal care arises when relatives, particularly grandparents, step in voluntarily, often without court proceedings or the involvement of local authorities. These arrangements can work well when there is agreement between parties, the child settles appropriately, and there are no safeguarding concerns.
However, informal arrangements can be precarious. Grandparents often do not have parental responsibility and may face difficulties in accessing support. Education, health care and benefit entitlements may be cumbersome to navigate without legal authority to act in the child’s interests.
Formal care arrangements include:
– Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs): Introduced in 2005, SGOs provide a framework enabling a relative or family friend to care for a child until adulthood. The order confers parental responsibility, superseding parents in most decision-making without removing their legal status completely. Many grandparents seek this arrangement to gain legal recognition and access support.
– Child Arrangements Orders: These determine who the child lives with and spends time with and can grant parental responsibility. Child arrangements orders are common where there is less conflict and the parties aim to avoid the severance of family ties that comes with adoption.
– Local Authority Foster Care: In cases involving significant safeguarding issues, children may be placed with relatives as foster carers. This arrangement involves the local authority formally placing the child with a family member who must be approved as a foster carer.
The legal route chosen often depends on the child’s needs, the relationships within the family, financial resources, and potential safeguarding concerns.
The Emotional Toll and Motivations
For many grandparents, stepping into the parenting role comes with profound emotional consequences. It is more than just a logistical or legal shift; it often involves grief, betrayal, and the rupture of family aspirations. Grandparents may care for children because their own child is struggling, addicted, or in prison. These circumstances can lead to a complex mix of love, disappointment, and concern.
Although most grandparents assume caregiving duties out of love and moral duty, the transformation from grandparent to primary carer is far from straightforward. They must redefine their identity in ways they never anticipated. The balance between being a grandparent and assuming parental responsibilities alters family dynamics significantly. These changes may extend across generations and may cause tension with parents who still wish to play a role in their child’s life, even if under supervised or court-restricted conditions.
Despite these challenges, the motivation for many remains deeply rooted in a desire to keep children out of the care system and maintain familial continuity. The cultural ethos of family obligation often underpins these decisions, driving grandparents to provide safe, loving environments that preserve the child’s sense of identity and belonging.
Legal Hurdles Facing Grandparent Carers
While existing legislation in England & Wales supports the principle of family-based care, the law often falls short in equipping grandparents with accessible legal pathways. A key issue is the lack of automatic parental responsibility. Unless grandparents have a court order, they may find themselves powerless to influence decisions around schooling, medical treatment, or travel.
Obtaining an SGO or a child arrangements order requires court applications, often without the benefit of legal aid. Although legal aid may be available in child protection cases where the local authority is involved, it is frequently means-tested, limited, or simply misunderstood by applicants without legal guidance.
Additionally, to apply for certain orders under Section 10 of the Children Act 1989, grandparents may need to seek the court’s leave (permission), an added legal burden with no guarantee of success. The rationale is to prevent frivolous or malicious applications, but in practice, it can present a significant barrier for genuine carers.
Those who become formal kinship foster carers must complete the fostering assessment and approval process. While this comes with access to fostering allowances and training, it also subjects carers to close scrutiny and may inadvertently lead to strained family relationships.
Financial Inequities and Support Gaps
Perhaps one of the most pressing issues facing grandparent kinship carers is the financial strain. Grandparents may be on fixed incomes, retired, or approaching retirement when they assume guardianship responsibilities. The cost of feeding, clothing, educating, and entertaining a growing child is substantial, often without appropriate financial recompense.
While foster carers receive regulated allowances from local authorities, informal carers—by far the majority—are frequently ineligible for equivalent support. In some cases, carers remain unaware of benefits such as Child Benefit, Universal Credit, or discretionary payments from local councils.
Special guardians may receive an SGO allowance, but this is discretionary and subject to means-testing, creating significant variation in support across different local authorities. Despite their critical role, many grandparents are left navigating a convoluted financial landscape with scant assistance.
Repeated reviews by the Family Rights Group, the Parliamentary Education Committee, and child welfare charities have called for better and more consistent support for kinship carers. The continued discrepancy between looked-after children’s foster carers and kinship carers remains a contentious issue with both legal and ethical implications.
The Role Social Workers and Local Authorities Play
Local authorities play a pivotal role in shaping the experiences of grandparent carers. Ideally, they should help families explore kinship placements before initiating care proceedings. Statutory Guidance for local authorities underlines the importance of family group conferences, which enable families to come together and devise plans for care involving relatives.
However, implementation remains inconsistent. Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that some local authorities only engage grandparents late in the process, or provide minimal information about legal options and associated rights. Others may discourage kinship care if they believe the family background is intertwined with the risks faced by the child.
In some instances, where there is ambiguity over whether a child is legally “looked after” by the Local Authority, this can result in substantial confusion, leaving grandparents unclear about their legal status and the availability of support.
Social workers are vital intermediaries, but caseload pressures and inconsistent training on kinship care matters can lead to an inequitable system. Enhancing their capacity to support families navigating this terrain is essential if courts are to rely increasingly on family-based solutions.
Impact on the Children
From the child’s perspective, being raised by a grandparent can offer continuity, familiarity, emotional security and cultural stability that are often absent in care homes or unrelated foster placements. Research demonstrates that children in kinship care experience fewer placement disruptions, higher levels of wellbeing and stronger identity formation compared to those in unrelated foster care.
Nevertheless, children in these arrangements may still face psychological distress, arising from separation from their parents or witnessing abuse, neglect or trauma. Grandparent carers must respond to these complex emotional needs, often without appropriate training or therapeutic support.
Moreover, the child’s relationship with their parents remains a sensitive area. Contact arrangements may be informal or court-regulated, and managing that contact appropriately presents an ongoing emotional and logistical challenge, often without clear guidance.
Balancing the child’s need for connection with safety and stability requires a high level of emotional intelligence and support that many grandparents must develop on the job.
Moving Towards Reform
Campaigners and charities are urging for reforms to simplify processes, enhance support and offer formal recognition of grandparent carers. There are growing calls for:
– Clearly defined rights and recognition for kinship carers within social policy
– Access to legal aid for those seeking SGOs or child arrangements orders
– Financial parity between kinship carers and foster carers
– Improved training for social workers on kinship placement protocols
– National standards to replace the postcode lottery in local authority support
While some progress has been made, including increased attention in parliamentary committees and collaborative research, substantial gaps remain. The introduction of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in 2022 has raised expectations, but translating recommendations into tangible, equitable outcomes remains the critical challenge ahead.
Conclusion
Grandparents who step up to care for grandchildren in times of family crisis often do so at great personal cost, yet with unwavering dedication. Their contributions are indeed heroic, albeit underappreciated. In offering continuity, love and resilience, they play a uniquely valuable role in the tapestry of child welfare provision in England & Wales.
To ensure these families thrive, the legal and welfare systems must evolve to acknowledge the unique challenges and strengths they bring. Recognising and empowering grandparents in kinship arrangements is not just a matter of fulfilling a duty—it is a testament to honouring the strength of family in its most committed and nurturing form.