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Relatives or friends who have to take over the full-time, permanent care of a child often suffer significant financial hardship. We at the Family Rights Group argue that such carers should be entitled to an allowance that reflects the cost of care.¹ This should not be a discretionary payment administered by social services but a state benefit. It should be either an "unsupported child" element of the child tax credit, or an improved and expanded "guardian's allowance".

So what is family and friends care? Although there are many children who share households with relatives and friends on a temporary or permanent basis, the report focuses on the situation of carers who have stepped in when a child cannot live with or be cared for by a parent.

This may arise as a result of family breakdown, bereavement, parental illness or child protection concerns. The Family Rights Group's Second Time Around study into grandparents who are carers found that most carers would have had little or no involvement with social services,² even though the reasons for the care arrangements are often similar to those of looked-after children.

There are no national statistics for children living with family and friends carers, but estimates suggest there could be as many as 300,000. The Fostering Network suggests that only a small number of carers are approved as foster carers (6,900 on 31 March 2002), although the number of children who are officially fostered by a relative or friend has increased by more than a third since 1997.

Family and friends carers make huge commitments and sacrifices to care for children. They also often experience difficulties in gaining access to support services from statutory agencies. Unlike foster carers who are assessed and trained before they take a child, family and friends carers often take a child in an emergency. The child may arrive with few belongings and may need to move school with all the attendant additional financial costs. Neither the benefits system nor the financial help available from local authorities are sufficiently generous and flexible to meet the short-term and long-term financial impact of caring for another person's child.

For instance, Second Time Around found that more than a third of grandparents had given up work to care for their grandchild and a further 7 per cent had reduced their working hours. This led to immediate financial problems and contributed to longer term problems as many carers were in the last years of their working life and the loss of work severely affected their pension. One carer said: "I've paid all my taxes. We've got nothing. Our grandson gets punished - we need money to meet his needsÉI am ignored. I am a fully paid up member of society but when we need help we are told 'on your bike'."

Seven out of 10 grandparents said they had suffered financial hardship as a consequence of caring for their grandchild.

So what financial support is available? Family and friends carers are, at best, entitled to the same benefits as parents. Child benefit, tax credits and income support are paid to the person looking after the child. However, many carers have difficulty in claiming these benefits, particularly where the parent is continuing to claim child benefit. One carer said:"The benefits system needs to change. I didn't get a proper family allowance because my daughter kept the book and wouldn't give it back to me, and they knew that. The social worker and everyone could confirm that the child was with me - they even had a residence order but it made no difference. Without the child benefit book you can't get income support. So that's one area that's bad."

It can take several weeks to sign over a claim for child benefit, which can cause severe hardship. There is also no recognition of the costs that a new carer will incur, for example, clothing, toys, furniture, and longer term costs such as housing, none of which the carer will have planned for.

The only additional state benefit for family and friends carers is the guardian's allowance. This is only payable to carers where the child is orphaned or one parent has died and the other is missing, in prison or a mental health hospital.

Councils with social services responsibilities are the only other providers of financial support. In practice, levels of financial support are very varied, with most going to family and friends carers who are approved foster carers. Some support goes to residence order holders, although mostly in circumstances where the child was previously looked after by the local authority. Second Time Around found many carers have to fight for a residence order allowance. One carer said: "The local social services consider that they were not involved in his placement and therefore have no responsibility towards him. This cannot be so because the court was advised by a social worker.

"We used all our savings in childminding fees. Because we are not on income support we weren't allowed free school meals. We now receive £60 per week for the three children from social services, that is £20 each for each child, after fighting for nearly 18 months with social services and involving our MP."


Generally, very little or no financial support is available to most residence order holders, those without a court order, and those who are caring for children outside the looked-after children system. Financial support is determined mostly by whether a child is or has been looked after by the local authority and not by the needs of the child or the carers.

There are very different views about the state's responsibility for supporting family and friends care. Some argue that families have a duty to care for children and that relatives and friends should not be entitled to more financial support than a parent. They argue that funding relatives could even encourage such arrangements for children who would otherwise live with their parents.

Others take the view that family and friends carers should be entitled to support services and financial help at an equivalent level to foster carers as the children would otherwise be in state care and their needs are the same as the needs of children who are fostered.

These debates are played out on a daily basis as families and practitioners grapple with decisions in an area where there is no policy or guidance. This can lead to wide variations in decision-making, a lack of clarity for families about their entitlement to services, and (perhaps more worryingly) far-reaching decisions that reflect the views of individual staff or the needs of the local authority more than the needs of the child or carer.

Funding Family and Friends Care concludes that research strongly suggests that children cared for by relatives do at least as well as children cared for by strangers. Family and friends carers and the children they are caring for are entitled to far greater clarity about the responsibilities of the state. Carers and children have the right to support, guidance and financial provision. If a child's carers are struggling financially, this can only have a damaging impact on the child's development and well-being.

The green paper Every Child Matters is silent on family and friends care, despite seeking detailed comments about foster and residential care. But a properly supported family and friends framework is one way of achieving the five key outcomes sought in the green paper, and is an opportunity that should not be missed.

The way forward   

The report makes the following recommendations: 

• Family and friends care should be recognised and developed as a distinct care arrangement for children, with its own policy, guidance and regulation. The lack of such a framework means that children and their carers often fall through the net of financial and practical support. 
• For children cared for under residence orders, the new special guardianship orders and informal arrangements, there should be an "unsupported child element" to the child tax credit. This should be broadly in line with New Zealand where "unsupported child allowance" is a state benefit. This should be administered by the Inland Revenue and entitlement validated by a child care professional in the absence of any court order. Alternatively, the existing guardians allowance should be increased and also made available for children whose parents are unable to care for them.  
• There needs to be far greater consistency in the use of residence order allowances, and in the payment of fostering allowances. There should be national guidelines and standardised criteria and levels of payment. 
• Family and friends carers should also be entitled to a range of non-maintenance payments to help them meet the day-to-day costs of raising their young relatives. In particular, help is needed with "start up costs", legal costs, school uniform and other educational costs.   

Alison Richards is legal adviser at the Family Rights Group and is also assistant director of the child studies programme at King's College London. Robert Tapsfield is chief executive of the Family Rights Group.  

References  

¹ A Richards and R Tapsfield, Funding Family and Friends Care: The Way Forward, Family Rights Group, 2003, from 020 7923 2628 or go to www.frg.org.uk  

² A Richards , Second Time Around: A Survey of Grandparents Raising their Grandchildren, Family Rights Group, 2001