Austerity hitting grandparents hard too – a view from the Women’s Budget Group

By Sue Cohen

The Women’s Budget Group

The Women’s Budget Group have asked me to write this blog as I’m on their committee and they’ve just heard I have a new grandson. I’m excited as I’m off to visit my daughter and baby grandson in London. Coincidentally they live in the same road as Grandparents Plus and coincidentally as I am writing this on the train my brother, a documentary-maker phones wanting a conversation about grandparents. He’s met quite a few in the course of his latest film and he’s bowled over. Family values are as strong as ever he tells me.

I know this having been CEO for the Single Parent Action Network for over 20 years www.spanuk.org.uk – lucky to meet grandparents from all backgrounds and cultures, who are there for their families through the good and the tough times. And these are tough times of course, with government policies not matching political rhetoric on family values.  Austerity and welfare reform are creating a domino effect, impacting badly on low income family members including grandparents.

Single parent families are hardest hit by austerity measures, losing on average a twelfth of their income. To keep the bailiffs at bay, many grandparents end up supplementing the family income, as well as feeding their grandchildren when money runs out at the end of the week.

Grandparents are also being called on to provide the childcare for many of the 400,000 single parents now required to find work or face sanctions. Given most available jobs extend outside of school hours, grandparents provide the wrap-around childcare needed to cover shift work including night shifts. When grandparents should be enjoying a life with more choices they can end up with less choice than when their children were young – leading more pressurised lives with their health also under pressure, looking after grandchildren, whilst often balancing their own jobs.

It’s more manageable if grandparents live near their grandchildren. But the new bedroom tax also has an unequal effect on single parents and will make this more difficult. Many will have to pay more for spare rooms and some families face forced displacement having to move far away from grandparents in order to find cheap accommodation. Everyone in the family loses out.

In the UK the shrinking state is impacting disproportionately on women including grandmothers, who because they love their families so, will try and fill the economic, social/childcare gaps. The increasingly received wisdom is that it has to be this way, but some other EU countries have not gone down this path. Sweden has much greater investment in the social infrastructure and is performing much better than the UK economically, with all families including single parent families benefiting in the process. Germany has policies that recompense grandparents for looking after their sick grandchildren. We need to pressurise our MPs and tell them that that in some cases the EU can be a guiding light with regard to family values and that words need to be matched by policies in this country.

You are never too old to change the world!

By Nigel Priestley
Senior Partner, Ridley & Hall Solicitors

I recently represented a 67 year old grandmother who had been asked to care for her two grand children in 2000. For years she had asked her local council for help caring for two very damaged children. In the end Care Proceedings were brought to take her grandchildren into care and we had a fight on our hands. The council was blind to the tremendous work she had done with the children. Her grand daughter had to be accommodated by the County Council but she knew that her grandson was best with her.

In the end the council failed and her grandson is thriving in her care. But in the course of the proceedings we discovered that the Residence Allowance she was being paid was chronically low. We challenged the council by Judicial Review and have negotiated a successful settlement.

Her challenge will potentially lead to a change in the payments for over 200 recipients of Residence Allowances in that County. Many Carers will benefit. Their world will be changed!

The story encapsulates why grandparents often need to take legal advice. They may be caring for a grand child who is the subject of care proceedings. They may have put themselves forward to care for a child in foster care and have a negative assessment that they wish to challenge. They may have had a child placed with them and either are not being paid an allowance or they are receiving only a token amount. They may have sought help and got nowhere.

For many grand parents care proceedings are a nightmare. They may find themselves forced to take a Residence Order or Special Guardianship Order – and not even be in court to argue about the type of order or the package of support.

But where they already have their grand children, they may find the Local Authority simply walks away claiming that there is a “private arrangement”.

Whatever the circumstances it’s vital that grandparents who have taken on their grandchildren need specialist legal advice. Don’t be fobbed off with solicitors on the Council’s approved list. Find a specialist!

Spotlight on the experiences of a sibling carer

By Melanie Burgess

Melanie Burgess, 24, became a kinship carer six years ago after her mother Janet died from cancer. She has just received an award from Cosmopolitan magazine.

When I became a Kinship Carer I was at the other end of the spectrum to a Grandparent Kinship Carer. I was just 18 years old when I took on the responsibility for my younger sisters who were 12 and 15 years old at the time. I chose to do this out of love for my sisters, and this is the obvious reason why every family member or family friend decides to take it on without a hesitation, to keep their family together and to avoid them going into care.

You would think that by doing the right thing and what was necessary in such a difficult situation, in return I would  naturally obtain the support and backing I needed. However this is not the case. If I were to explain the difficulties and challenges that we faced, the list would be very long!

I had to grow up fast; I was responsible for things like our finances and some of my friends fell away because my life was so different. My confidence suffered badly but my boyfriend James and the girls supported me throughout and after counselling I began to pull myself back up.

A real difficulty was the lack of emotional support not only for my sisters, but for me too. We were three young girls grieving the loss of our mother, yet everything was such a fight to get sorted out, causing even more of a strain, at an already stressful and emotional time. Fortunately for us, our school were incredibly supportive. In fact they were the biggest support network outside of the family.

I understand that the work of social services is to look after and protect the welfare of children who are at risk, but personally we needed a different kind of help instead of the practicalities that they proceed with. I strongly believe there needs to be something put in place specifically for Kinship Carers which doesn’t place them in the same box as irresponsible parents. We need something where Kinship Care is actually recognised.

Kinship Care needs to be recognised, especially by politicians and decision makers in order for more rights to be obtained. Furthermore, as I have personally experienced, there is a lack of support when Kinship Care comes to an end.  I have given my sisters the support to succeed but what happens to me? I was unable to go to university, I have gaps in my employment and I am struggling to find a job now, not because of an inability, but because of the circumstances of the last six years. I am in no way regretful for what I have done in being a Kinship Carer, I would simply like for it not to be something that stops me succeeding in the future.

Young people should not be forced to choose between caring for the family members they love and having a bright future. We need to ensure there is the support in place to make sure they can achieve both.

Thank you Mr Narey. We hope Michael Gove and David Cameron are listening.

By Sarah Wellard,
Policy and Research Manager, Grandparents Plus

We welcome the strong endorsement of kinship care from Martin Narey, the Government’s adoption adviser. In this week’s Children and Young People Now magazine he says, “I believe that first you try to reunite families, second you go to kinship carers – and only then do you look for adoption.”

We hope he will pass on this message to Michael Gove and David Cameron. There’s a real risk that current plans for speeding up adoption, combined with cuts to Legal Aid, will have the unintended consequence of making it harder for relatives to step in to keep children out of care.

We also welcome Mr Narey’s recognition that there is an urgent need to make kinship care more affordable, for grandparents in particular. As well as usually being the best choice for children who can’t live with their parents, kinship care makes good financial sense. It costs councils on average £40,000 a year to a keep a child in independent foster care. But for many grandparents and other family members who are bringing up vulnerable children who would otherwise be in care, the price is dear indeed. A recent FRG survey found that a third of kinship carers have family incomes of £350 a week or below, including any benefits or allowances they get, and 11% have to manage on below £200. Grandparents Plus’s recent report Giving up the day job? found that nearly half of working kinship carers gave up work when children moved in and more than four in ten are now on benefits as a result..
 
As one grandmother we spoke to commented:

“It’s exhausting, especially the poverty side of it.  Never being able to afford a holiday et cetera. Because you have initially given up work, you can’t get another job and are therefore pushed into poverty for the rest of your life.  No pension means you’re always on state benefits.”

It’s something of a lottery whether, as a kinship carer, you manage to get support from your local council – and all too often you don’t.  Around half of councils still don’t even have a policy on family and friends care – almost a year after the legal deadline to publish one.

Mr Gove and Mr Cameron, we hope you are listening to your adviser.
It’s high time you recognised the fantastic job kinship carers do, and give them the same profile that you are currently giving to adoption.