In this guest blog, Chief Social Worker Isabelle Trowler shares her insights on the first national Practice Guide on Kinship Care, developed by Foundations and commissioned by the Department for Education.
It’s an important week for kinship families. The increasing policy focus on improving support for kinship carers offers a huge opportunity to improve outcomes for children, young people and families living in kinship arrangements. I know that the Government is determined to give every child the opportunities they deserve. Kinship care is the most prevalent form of alternative care for children and last week the Department for Education issued Kinship Care Statutory Guidance which will help local authorities better support kinship families.
I’m also aware that there is significant variation in the support available to kinship carers across local authorities. To support local authorities to strengthen services so more children can grow up in their family networks, Foundations has today published the first national Practice Guide on kinship care commissioned by the Department for Education. The recommendations set out in the Practice Guide will help local authorities to achieve the best possible support for kinship families.
Practice Guides bring together the strongest evidence from the UK and abroad and set out what is known about how best to achieve the objectives in the Children’s Social Care National Framework. They are designed to help local leaders plan and deliver effective help and support for children and families by providing clarity about the support and interventions that have been shown to improve outcomes. The guides will also be useful for national policy makers as they design policy and programmes and support local authorities to implement the recommendations.
In my role as Chief Social Worker, I have long wanted to see evidenced-based guidelines for children’s social care. The busy landscape of guidance, ‘best practice’ and sometimes conflicting advice can be confusing and unhelpful for leaders locally. We need, and the children and families we support deserve, the clarity that is available in fields such as education and health.
I am delighted that the first Practice Guide is on kinship care. But of course this is just the start, and we all have work to do. Simply producing and disseminating guidance will not lead to change in services or practice. I urge senior leaders to reflect on how to use this guide to commission and design services to support kinship carers and children in kinship arrangements. The reflective tool, which is published today alongside the Practice Guide, is designed to support local authorities to action the key principles and recommendations.
Foundations will be partnering with a small number of local authorities to support embedding the recommendations and generate ‘how to’ learning that can be shared more widely. In addition, the new first ever National Kinship Care Ambassador, Jahnine Davis will also work directly with local authorities to improve services as well as acting as a national advocate for kinship children and carers across government.
The commitment to developing new Practice Guides by the Department for Education is an important step. The Guides put high quality evidence front and centre in children’s social care to ensure opportunity for the most vulnerable children. Further guides are being developed too. I’m delighted to be introducing this first guide on kinship and I look forward to seeing the changes that will follow.
#ThisIsKinshipCare
