Birmingham Children's Trust renews partnership with Kinship

In December last year, the first ever National Kinship Care Strategy for England was published, setting out the Government’s plans for kinship care. This included new commitments and £20 million of investment over 2024-5.

As a result, Kinship — the leading kinship charity in England & Wales — has been awarded a £3 million contract to deliver a bespoke package of training and support for all kinship carers in England, including informal carers, launching in Spring 2024. 

• All the information you need about the National Kinship Care Strategy for England.

Birmingham Children's Trust and Kinship have been working together closely in recent years to support the kinship carers in Birmingham. This important partnership is now set to continue with the announcement of Kinship Reach, a specifically tailored programme to assist 60 kinship families in our city and allow our carers, families and children to thrive.

Building on existing guidance, Kinship Reach will offer carers further help with their confidence and wellbeing, as well as improving access to information and social connection through peer support. 

In addition, all carers in Birmingham are able to access general support directly via the Kinship website (this is irrespective of living arrangement — children can be living with them as connected carers, SGO, CAO, private foster carers, or a private family arrangement).

Kinship will be working with all local authorities across England to ensure this in-depth and thorough new training offer can impact as many of the more than 200,000 children living in kinship families nationwide as possible.

A joint statement from the Trust and Kinship read: "We look forward to the year ahead of building our long-standing partnership of Birmingham Children’s Trust and Kinship, for the benefit of kinship families across Birmingham."