Alongside kinship carers, for more than a decade, Kinship has campaigned for kinship carers to receive paid leave from work. So, we welcome the government’s recent decision to include kinship carers in its long-awaited review of the parental leave system.

Unlike birth parents and adopters, kinship carers – relatives and family friends who step up to raise children, often in times of crisis – have no legal right to paid leave from work when they take on the responsibility of raising a child in their family.

Kinship carers’ lives change overnight when they take in traumatised children usually with no support. There are more than 141,000 children in kinship care in England and Wales – three times the number in mainstream foster care. 

A lack of entitlement to paid leave often forces kinship carers to leave their jobs, plunging them into financial hardship and into the benefits system, as well as hindering their ability to provide the stability these children need. 

Kinship recently published new research Making work pay for kinship carers  which revealed how poor employment support was pushing kinship carers out of the labour market unnecessarily and keeping them there. 

Our survey of 1,300 kinship carers revealed that nearly half (45%) in work lose their jobs and careers when they raise a relative or friend’s child. 80% of those who stopped working when they became kinship carers have never returned to any form of work. Only 3% were given discretionary paid leave, and just 8% could take unpaid leave. 

The government’s review of parental leave is a crucial opportunity to rectify the current unfair and longstanding gap in the law and totally unfair treatment of kinship carers, who keep children in their families preventing them from going into already overstretched local authority care.

They take in newborn babies and toddlers often with very little notice and are then expected to go back to work the next day. You wouldn’t expect a mother with a newborn baby to be back in the workplace, and equally there’s no justifiable reason why kinship carers should be expected to do so.  

Single mother-of-two Samantha from Doncaster had to give up her full-time teaching assistant job so she could look after her baby great nephew when she was refused paid leave from work.

At the same time her colleagues were taking adoption and maternity leave but there was nothing in place for kinship carers like her, so she had no choice other than to quit the job she loved.

Samantha says paid leave from work and flexible working would have been a massive help and would make a dramatic difference to kinship carers lives. She says it’s not fair that kinship carers are doing the right thing by keeping children within the family but are not receiving any support to help them do that.

Thankfully, some large employers are beginning to recognise how vital paid leave for kinship carers is in the absence of statutory paid employment leave.  

Asda employee and kinship carer Natalie is delighted that her employer has introduced a new policy providing 26 weeks paid leave. She says it will help retain talented staff and provide stability for vulnerable children and families.

Since 2023, Kinship’s pioneering Kinship Friendly Employer scheme has supported leading employers such as Tesco, B&Q and Lloyds Banking Group to deliver paid leave policies for kinship carers in their workforces. Tesco says it will continue to work with us to raise awareness of the benefits of paid kinship leave for both colleagues and businesses.

We encourage other employers to follow their lead as we know real change happens when employers shape workplace cultures that enable people to thrive. That’s why we’re proud to be working with Working Families and have joined their UK Family Friendly Workplace Certification, as an advocacy partner, which sets new benchmarks for family-friendly workplaces that benefit employers and families.

By embedding family-friendly policies, employers are not only creating better working environments but also strengthening their ability to attract and retain top talent, boost productivity, and support economic growth.

However, kinship carers deserve the security which a right to statutory paid leave would provide without being reliant on the goodwill of their employer.

We will continue campaigning for kinship carers to have greater statutory employment rights until the government finally addresses this wrong with legislation.

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