Kinship Care

We Are Wirral Children’s Services is a campaign aiming to create and follow a list of shared goals to make the work Wirral Children’s Services better and help families and the Council get along well by working together.

In January 2025, we held the first "We Are Wirral Children’s Event." It included Council leaders, workers from Children’s Services, parents, and young people. Together, we made a list of what we expect from the people who work with children.

  • Kinship carers are amazing people, like grandparents, aunts, uncles, or close family friends, who take care of children and young people when their parents can’t.

    They give children and young people a safe home, lots of love, and a place where they feel they belong. These carers are really important and deserve a big thank you!

    The government has made a new rule to explain what kinship care is.

    This helps everyone understand it better.

    They’re also using “kinship care” instead of “family and friends care” from now on

  • here are a few ways to be a kinship carer, and each one is a bit different. Here’s what they are:

    • Private Foster Care: This is when someone who isn’t a parent or close relative, like a cousin or a family friend, looks after a child or young person for 28 days or more. The parents and the carer agree on this, not the government. You take care of the child or young person but don’t have all the big responsibilities like a parent.

    • Kinship Foster Care: This is when a family member or friend becomes an official foster carer. You need to be checked and approved first. The local council helps look after the child or young person and shares some responsibilities with the parents.

    • Special Guardianship Order (SGO): This is a special rule from a court that says a child or young person will live with you until they’re 18. You can make most decisions for the child or young person without asking their parents.

    • Adoption: This is when you become a child or young person’s new parent forever, and their old parents don’t have any legal connection anymore. This isn’t common for kinship carers because it changes the family forever.

  • Kinship carers can be:

    • A close relative, like a grandparent or aunt.

    • A close friend of the child or young person or their family.

    • Someone who used to be a step-parent or lived with the child or young person’s parent.

    • Someone who knows the child or young person, like a teacher or childminder.

  • Taking care of a child or young person can be hard, but there’s help out there! Here’s what you can get:

    • Family Help: This gives kinship carers support, like parenting classes or help from Family Hubs. Family Hubs can connect you to places like Citizens Advice for extra help. Find your local Family Hub on the Family Toolbox website.

    • Support Groups: These are places where kinship carers can meet, talk, and share their stories. It helps you feel less alone and more confident. For example:

      • Kinship Carers Group: Meets the first Tuesday of every month at Creating Communities, 4 Brandon Street, CH41 5HN. It’s a friendly place to chat over coffee or tea.

      • Special Guardians Drop-In: Meets the last Wednesday of every month at Start-Yard, 108 Church Street, Birkenhead, CH41 5JA. Come have a coffee and talk with other carers.

    • Training and Learning: Being a kinship carer can be tricky, so training helps you learn how to handle things like tough behavior or understanding a child or young person’s feelings. You can:

      • Sign up for courses with Wirral Children Safeguarding Partnership. Email wcsptraining@wirral.gov.uk to see if you can join.

      • Check out parenting programs at Wirral Family Hubs on the Family Toolbox website.

      • Join Kinship, a charity that helps kinship carers with training, like how to work with local councils or help children and young people with their feelings. Visit kinship.org.uk for more info.

      • If the child or young person you care for has a social worker, ask about other training by emailing fosteringadmin@wirral.gov.uk.

    • School Support: Children and young people in kinship care might get extra money for school through something called Pupil Premium Plus. Tell the school if the child or young person is in kinship care, like fostering or a Special Guardianship Order. You can also get help from Wirral Virtual School by emailing wirralvirtualschool@wirral.gov.uk. They offer free webinars about things like helping children and young people with school or dealing with tough times.

    • Housing Help: Kinship carers can now get the same help as foster carers to find a home through the Property Pool Plus scheme. This makes it easier to get a safe place to live.

    • Legal Help: Sometimes kinship carers need help understanding their rights or dealing with court stuff. You might get free or low-cost legal help from:

      • Family Rights Group

      • Coram Children’s Legal Centre

      • Grandparents Legal Centre

      • LawWorks (find a legal advice clinic near you) Contact them to see how they can help. You might also get legal aid or support from Social Care to pay for a lawyer.

We want to hear from you!

We want to continue the discussion. You can use the form below to tell us your thoughts and help us to continue to make Wirral and amazing place to grow up.

You Said, We Did!

‘You said you wanted clear language around death.’

We understand that language related to death can be confusing and varies across different services. Terms like bereavement, grief, and loss are appropriate in the right contexts; however, when discussing death specifically, we want to be clear and direct. Therefore, our previously titled "Bereavement" page has been renamed "Death," and all future resources and content related to this topic will use this term consistently.