You may not have heard of kinship care – where a child is taken in, long or short-term, by a relative or close family friend , because their birth parents are unable to look after them. I was placed at my grandma’s at three years old due to severe neglect. Later, my birth parents would both prematurely pass and leave nothing behind.

The kinship care system is very complicated. Your ‘legal order’ – the rules the courts set around parental rights and responsibilities – determines how much support kinship care families receive, in financial, practical and therapeutic terms.

Children raised in kinship care become NEET (not in education, employment or training) at a rate almost three times higher than children who live with their birth parents. Almost half of us have a special education

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