Contribution
It is true that there is a real diversity in the situations of kinship carers, both in the causes of people finding themselves caring for young people and in the legal structures that they are operating under. We totally recognise that, as we move forward in trying to tackle these issues, we need to be really open-eyed to that full range of different experiences and situations.
Caroline tells her story:
“Eve landed on her arm, screamed out in pain, one look and I knew it was broken. I took her to the emergency department…and she was admitted immediately to the children’s ward. An X-ray was taken and Eve was administered morphine. The consultant booked Eve in for an operation the following day. She had been on morphine all night to help her with the pain. The surgeon came round and explained the procedure. Eve was prepped and then the anaesthetist came with a form to sign. He asked who I was. I told him I was aunt and the legal guardian. He then asked to see my legal order. I told him that no one had asked…He said, ‘I refuse to administer anaesthetic without seeing the legal document.’ I had been up all night with a crying young girl; the last thing I thought about was a legal order. I called my husband, who had to leave work to go home and find the document. It took two hours for the photo ID to be sent…During this time, Eve was hooked up to morphine. We had to wait for the anaesthetist to finish his surgery list to look at the photo on my phone, which was accepted in the blink of an eye.”
Steph points out that this happens consistently:
“I have to show copies at all doctors, dentist, school, etc. Any time we have to make a decision for him I have to show proof. Can you imagine if I lost that piece of paper? It’s not right having to explain that you are the carer in front of the child again and again. Imagine how the child feels.”
Sadly, these situations are typical and, as Steph points out, they can be deeply traumatising for both children and carers.
Christine says:
“I really don’t want to carry my SGO with me; I’m worried I will lose it or it will get into the wrong hands.”
She is not alone. It is also perhaps unfair of us to expect clinical professionals to recognise the various forms of legal document that are not recorded on any Government system but instead live as paper artefacts with mysterious acronyms such as SGO, special guardianship order, or CAO, child arrangement order. How can we be failing children and kinship carers so badly?
Yet there is hope. Christine goes on to say:
“We should be given a card with a barcode and all the details they need to know so that you can keep it in your purse.”
Caroline agrees:
“We need an ID card that will live in my purse, so I don’t have to go through this again.”
Kinship Carers UK, a national charity based in my constituency of Worcester, has the answer. It is ready to help develop an authorised photographic kinship carer ID card and app for all carers, regardless of the type of legal order. This card would allow kinship carers to live fully prepared for any eventuality. It would allow clinical staff to immediately recognise and validate a kinship guardianship situation and to deliver best practice in trauma-informed care, never requiring a family to retell their story or relive past trauma simply to access basic care.
The benefits go further. Preventing the situation described by our kinship families would save money as well as distress. The cost savings to councils on social worker time no longer spent answering queries or to the NHS in rebooked appointments are hard to quantify, especially as the Office for National Statistics has not managed to identify all kinship children, and health trusts do not record instances of rebook treatments for that reason. Even conservative estimates show a kinship carer ID card paying for itself within a year.
Kinship Carers UK has already been in talks with the Department of Health and Social Care and has received a positive response. It is ready to fundraise to secure resources for development, but talks have stalled, as work on the NHS app pushes a full digital implementation of a kinship carer ID back to potentially 10 years away. For kinship families, that is too long, and we as a Government of action, innovation, partnership and collaboration can do better. With a co-ordinated plan in partnership with the Department for Education, DHSC and possibly the Ministry of Justice, Kinship Carers UK can lead a consortium of charities to realise the ID card and information resources for NHS workers. That could be realised within two years, with later digital integration with the NHS in a decade.
My ask of the Minister is simple: will he and the Secretary of State for Health arrange to meet Kinship Carers UK and myself to formulate a plan with the goal of having authorised kinship carer ID cards issued by the end of 2028, for final adoption by the NHS by 2035? It is time for us to act and do what kinship carers are asking us to do and make the system work for them, not against them. Kinship carers work tirelessly to give the children they raise the very best opportunities in life; let us match their commitment. Let us commit to ending the stories we heard this evening and begin a new one: when this Government stepped up and delivered the kinship ID card.