In this blog, a member of our Experts by Experience panel reflects on her involvement in the selection of our new kinship care projects, sharing more about how her experiences of kinship care guided her decision making, as well as her thoughts on the potential impact that these projects could have on the lives of minoritised ethnic children and young people.
Kinship families from minoritised ethnic backgrounds often face additional challenges in accessing the support they need. While our previous research has provided insights into how structural inequalities have shaped the experiences of minoritised ethnic kinship carers, we still know very little about the experiences, needs, and perspectives of these children and young people. To address this, we recently launched two new research projects focusing on the experiences of minoritised ethnic children and young people in kinship care. You can find out more about these projects here.
In this blog, we spoke to a member of our Experts by Experience panel about their experiences of growing up in kinship care and how these experiences informed their work with us to select our new projects. Alongside other members of our Experts by Experience panel, they worked with our team throughout the funding call process, helping to refine the call for applications for research projects, and then making recommendations about which applicants should be awarded the funding.
Q: Could you tell us about your experience, as a young person from a minoritised ethnic background who grew up in kinship care, and how this shaped your approach to working with us on these projects? Why is it so important that Experts by Experience are involved in decision making processes like this?
My experience of kinship care was super varied. From a young age, I lived with family and friends, ultimately living with over 17 families. As a result, I’m fortunate to be a product of not one ethnic minority group, but a coalition worldwide. Throughout this time I lived with a family member a lot. They are Hindu, from a very traditional background and with a traditional way of thinking of things. This made it difficult for them to accept social services involvement altogether.
I know what it’s like to be othered, but one thing that vulnerable young people often have in common is a tendency to blame themselves. When you take a step back and you look at research like this, young people like myself can maybe begin to realise that our experiences are not our fault, but that there are factors that first we need to understand. Because we don’t understand them well enough yet.
Being involved in this work has been impactful and meaningful to me, because it’s shown me that we could get closer to finding an answer to it all: there is such little acknowledgement of the experiences of young people like myself, and I don’t wish that for the next generation.
Our involvement in this project – both through refining the original call for applications, as well as in making recommendations about which of the applicants should be awarded the fundings – has been really special and interesting. Those of us from the wider panel who were involved with this work were able to embody that feeling of diversity in a way that has a focus. Our experiences of adversity, of being raised in kinship care, and of being young people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, left us with similar feelings. This has now turned into a goal to help other young people like us. Maybe, in a way, we went through this ‘so they don’t have to’.
This diversity was so important, because we collectively create a picture. We cover different aspects of intersectionality and experience. It’s the personal element that we bring to the work that makes a real difference.
Q: We know that kinship families from minoritised ethnic backgrounds face additional challenges in accessing support. Why is it so important in your view to find out more about how these challenges impact children in kinship care? And why is listening to the voices of these children so vital?
Listening to the voices of minoritised ethnic children in kinship care is so important because the barriers they face are so layered and complex, particularly when you include the level of intersectionality. The barriers and the ancestral trauma are so embedded – it’s really difficult to break away from this trauma and heal without some really significant knock on effects, whether this is isolation from your family, or impact on your mental health.
I don’t feel that information on these families is often accurate. In my own experience, I don’t really think that cultural factors were recognised as barriers, they were simply recognised as facts. But they were barriers. It’s all part of a picture, of victimisation and of internalised trauma.
Minoritised ethnic children and young people growing up in kinship care have a very specific experience. As a child in care, you’re already different and othered. That combination of things makes you feel like you’re not going to fit in with your peers. And it can be quite a hard concept to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.
As a policy maker or decision maker, you can have sympathy or empathy with this. And I, as a person of colour and someone who has experiences of the care system, can see that link between a young person’s identity and their experiences. But when it comes to statistics, decisions, and research, we don’t always see this being focused on the voices of children. This means you can miss out on a really key thing and lack an understanding of what’s actually happening, as well as how to mitigate negative effects and give young people autonomy over their own situation and future.
Q: With your help, we’ve selected two new projects to fund: One which will explore the experiences of children from mixed heritage backgrounds, and one which will look specifically at the experiences of children from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds.
What did you like about these projects and how do you see these projects contributing to our understanding of children and young people’s experiences of kinship care? Could you share your reflections on the difference that these projects could make to the lives of minoritised ethnic children in kinship care?
I like the project on the experiences of children from mixed heritage backgrounds, as I think a number of us relate closely to these experiences. And the second project, on the experiences of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children and young people in kinship care, really mattered to me, because these communities can be so segregated and othered from our society – I think this is one of the biggest cultural issues that we face, and is such a risk for society as a whole.
The impact of these projects, and of work like this, could be enormous. A lot of the time, without intervention, support and understanding, you can come across some very black and white outcomes. In a lot of cultures there’s this tendency to kind of ‘close the door’ on a person, to apportion blame, or even to lose the unity of the family completely. When someone doesn’t feel understood, especially a child, they can internalise this, which can then come out in really harmful behaviours. It’s very easy to get stuck in that.
Q: Conducting research in this space can be complex and technical. In your opinion, what are the key things that we should be considering, alongside our partners, to ensure that we carry out research that is sensitive to the experiences of kinship families?
I believe that it’s necessary to actually utilise the feelings mentioned before of being othered, in that you have to understand that there are some cultural factors which will mean that you need a different approach entirely, especially when working with older generations. Where there is such a divide between people from different cultures, or where there are really fixed mentalities, I really think establishing a consistent and intentional rapport based on respect first is important.
You can find out more about the two projects that we are funding as a part of this work here. To learn more about our work with Experts by Experience, visit our website.