September 21, 2022 - 1604 views
This Kinship Care Week from 3-7 October we’re celebrating the amazing role that kinship carers across Wales play in children’s lives and our society.
Kinship has worked with members of the Kinship Care Alliance such as Liverpool Kinship Carers, and partners to coordinate fun ways to celebrate kinship carers during this year's #KinshipCareWeek.
If you’re a kinship carer or group wanting to get involved the charity has developed a free digital resources pack to help you organise and promote themed events like celebratory tea parties. It can be downloaded from https://kinship.org.uk/get-involved/kinship-care-week/ and is in both languages.
The theme for this year’s Kinship Care Week is ‘Kinship Memory of the Year’ and we’re encouraging kinship carers to share their best memory of being a kinship carer from the last year on their social channels.
It can be a video, photo, poem or drawing to highlight a family gathering or special occasion, or reaching a milestone like teaching a child to ride a bike.
Kinship carer, Lisa Mercier, who has been caring for her five-year-old grandson since he was 10-months-old, said:
“My best kinship memory this year was seeing the joy on my grandson's face as he blew out his birthday cake candles. It was his first ever birthday party with his friends and I booked a magician. My grandson's face was a picture when he saw him. To hear him and all the kids belly laughing and having a great time, was just so lovely."
Kinship carers are family relatives and close friends who step up to care for children when their parents are unable to look after them. They are often forced to give up secure jobs and spend life savings and pensions to keep the children they love within a safe, secure and stable family.
While it’s important to celebrate kinship families, it’s crucial to highlight that most feel unrecognised, undervalued, and unsupported. Kinship is raising awareness of their vital role and the challenges kinship carers face to help get them the support they so desperately need.
Kinship’s CEO Dr Lucy Peake said: “Kinship carers in Wales make huge sacrifices to keep children within loving, secure, and stable families and the week is an opportunity to recognise the crucial roles they play in children’s lives and our society.
“Kinship carers step up to raise children often in times of crisis when their parents can’t to prevent them going into the care system. But unlike foster carers they are normally left to manage with no financial, emotional, or practical support.
“This Kinship Care Week offers us the chance to celebrate the incredible difference kinship carers make and urge those in power to ensure that kinship carers receive the support they desperately need, to enable kinship families to thrive.
“We remain fully committed to campaigning alongside kinship cares to ensure we make change happen and improve the lives of all kinship carers and their families, and we will not stop until this happens.”
