How can I support a child through kinship care? 

Looking after a friend or relative’s child as a kinship carer can be a rewarding and challenging experience. Find out about the benefits for the child in your care and how you can support them. 

You can also read our advice on taking care of yourself as a family and friends carer. 

Where possible and appropriate local authorities will try to place a child in kinship care rather than foster care as this is usually better for the child. 

Emotional benefits 

When a child can’t live with their parent anymore, staying with someone they already know can help with the emotional transition between homes. Children are able to stay connected with their families and retain their sense of identity. Often children will be able to stay in the same area, going to same school and clubs and keep the same friends. All this can support their mental health and help them to thrive within family and community. As a kinship carer, you probably also have emotional investment in the long-term well-being of the child. 

Contact with parents  

With special guardianship orders and child arrangement orders, contact for the child is maintained to an agreed level with parents and extended family. Contact may take place in a variety of ways. Every child will have a support plan in which a contact plan outlines all the arrangements.   

Contact may take place face-to-face, supervised or unsupervised, in a contact centre or the carer’s or family member’s home. There may be overnight stays. Contact may also take place with letters, phone calls, emails, and texts.  

Not all children will have contact with their parents. Children must always be protected from people who are dangerous or pose risks to their physical or emotional welfare. But if contact is safe and appropriate it can help the child to keep family connections. 

If you have become a kinship carer, the first few weeks will be a time of huge adjustment for everyone. 

• Spend time getting to know them – get to know their personality, their likes and dislikes. Playing together as a family is a great way to build bonds and develop trust. If you already have a close relationship with them, use this time to help them settle in to your home. 
• Make a home that is child friendly – create a bedroom for them and make sure other areas of the home are welcoming to children. Make sure you have clothes, food, toys that they like. This will help them to start to feel secure, loved and valued in your home.  
• Introduce routines, rules and expectations – understanding the rules of the home will help them to feel safe and secure. But be prepared to be flexible and make reasonable adjustments as you get to know the child more so that they feel heard, respected and valued. Remember that they may have come from a different home environment and will need time to adjust to these expectations. 
• Use positive parenting techniques – this means focusing more on when a child has done something well and praising or rewarding this, rather than focusing on behaviour that is not desirable and disciplining this. You can learn more about child behaviour. 
• Be patient and sensitive – It takes time to build trust and understanding. The child may not respond to you in the way you were hoping or expecting. Try to remember that they may have had traumatic experiences and have little trust in their carers. They will be observing you, their environment and working out how safe they are. So continue to build a safe, secure and loving home for them and be constant and stable for them. When they are ready to talk to you, practice active listening. 

Children are likely to have a range of feelings about seeing their parents depending on their age and the family situation. They may feel nervous, excited, disinterested, frightened, angry and happy and often a combination of all those feelings.  

To support children with the process, it’s important to say encouraging and positive things about the contact while also listening to and validating a child’s thoughts and feelings about it.  

• Ask them how they are feeling and allow them the time and space to talk through their thoughts.  
• Let them know you are always there to listen and hear exactly what they are feeling.  
• Try to answer questions factually, in an age-appropriate way and without introducing your of your own difficult feelings or conflict and worry.  
• Tell children what is going to happen during contact to help give them understanding, structure and a feeling of safety around it. Let them know the time and length of it, who will be there, what they might do.  

It can be hard for the child if their parent fails to attend contact, or if they behave in a way that is inappropriate or upsetting. It is important to address this so that it doesn’t happen again. You might feel like you can talk directly to the parent about it, but if not you can communicate through a family support worker. For further advice, you can also speak to one of our parenting coaches.