IN PRAISE OF KIN CARERS
Welcome to your weekly blog post. Every week, I share with you my thinking on a residential care, foster care and/or transitioning from care topic. This week I’m talking about kin carers. If you find this content relevant and useful, please feel free to forward it on to someone else.
4pm Sunday afternoon in front of the wood fire. My wife Rachael on one sofa with one dog and me on the other with the second. All four of us fast asleep. We’d had the two grandchildren over since Friday morning and they have just left. We were all having a little rest!
We absolutely love having our two (adorable – we may possibly be biased) grandchildren and being a part of their lives as they grow and change. Aged one and three, they must be about the ‘easiest’ children to look after in the world! But we have found the physicality of lifting, carrying, walking, playing, changing nappies, bathing, cleaning up, cooking and feeding, the heightened concentration of continuously looking, listening and talking, and the occasional tantrum or interrupted night’s sleep, surprisingly exhausting! And all other new grandparents that I talk to seem to say the same. No doubt a combination of us just being older, forgetting or mis-remembering some of the daily realities of caring for children, and just being out-of-practice.
So while I have long conceptually appreciated the challenges that kin foster carers and particularly grandparents face looking after children, I have come to realise that my ‘baseline’ was way-off. Yes I knew about the likely challenges around the reasons for children coming into care in the first place, behavioral and developmental issues, and strained relationships with parents, but if our occasional weekends with our grandchildren are anything to go by, I hadn’t taken sufficient account of day-to-day living.
So with that in mind I am looking forward to today attending Ao Mārama Te Ao Rangatira, the Social Services Providers Aotearoa Social Sector Leaders' Summit. It is an in-person event at Te Papa our national museum in Wellington and so I’ll get to meet in-person with some colleagues who I have not seen for months. I am particularly keen to hear from
conference panel member Kate Bundle, Chief Executive of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust New Zealand, a national organisation providing support services to grandparents who are raising their grandchildren on a full-time basis.
COVID-19 has done little to alleviate concerns about the long-term sustainability of the traditional model of foster care which essentially relies on an ever reducing availability of volunteers who have both the capacity and capability to look after our children. While the professional foster care pathway has been good for many children, the development of lifelong connections tends not to be a central feature. While New Zealand, Australia and New Zealand have long used kin care (and most of southern Europe and much of the rest of the world), better addressing both the needs of indigenous children and young people, as well as the aspirations of indigenous peoples’, is bringing kin care back to the fore; I’m aware of several new innovative kin care developments both in New Zealand and elsewhere.
However, caring for children full-time again in their 40s, 50’s or 60’s is not usually a goal of many grandparents and will likely involve personal sacrifice. We need to better recognise kin foster carers and give then the support that they ask for, and in ways that they want. They deserve just as much support as non-kin foster carers. This weekend has been a timely reminder that they maybe deserve more.
And as ever, thanks again from me for the important work that you do.
Kia kaha (Stay Strong).
Iain
PS – Ready when you are. Here are some ways I can help you:
Attend one of our eight public webinars on leveraging global learning - one each on transitioning from care, foster care and residential care, each delivered for three different timezones. See www.betteroutcomes.org.nz/events
Online 3 month coaching program for managers or teams on extended foster care and accommodation for those transitioning from care. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
NEW Online 6 month coaching programme for managers or teams, on raising educational achievement. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
Work or partner with us at Better Outcomes on bespoke webinars, masterclasses, training, consultancy, or designing and delivering a research or evaluation project. Contact me at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz so that we can explore ideas and both decide on whether we are a good fit for each other.