The invisible carers: How relatives step in to keep children out of care—with minimal support

Clive was at work when the call came through. A primary school headteacher, he assumed children's services wanted to discuss one of his pupils. Instead, they were calling about his six-week-old niece, Savannah. Would he take her into temporary care? He said yes—casually, almost reflexively—and asked for a couple of days to prepare. The answer came back: she needs to arrive at four o'clock today. When he hesitated, they mentioned "other options." Foster care. Adoption. The weight of that unspoken threat settled on him. He said yes and hung up.

That afternoon, Clive sat in his empty house waiting. He had never been home at 3:30 on a school day before. When the social worker arrived and left Savannah in her carry cot, wrapped in a pink blanket, the silence was overwhelming. He burst into tears. He was a teacher, trained to manage classrooms of thirty children, but he had never changed a nappy. He owned no pushchair, no cot, no formula. He had a suitcase of her belongings and nothing else. Nine years later, that temporary arrangement has become permanent. Savannah is his legal ward. She still has the pink blanket. But Clive will tell you the path has been isolating and exhausting, even as it has been the most fulfilling thing he has ever done.

Clive's story is not exceptional. More than 141,000 children in England and Wales are being raised by kinship carers—relatives or family friends who step in when parents can no longer provide care. These arrangements prevent children from entering the formal care system, yet they operate in a shadow. Kinship care is twice as common as fostering, yet it receives a fraction of the support. A new survey by the charity Kinship found that four in ten carers were given less than an hour to decide. One in five had less than a day. Alan and Julie, both 65, were given ten minutes. They had just returned from holiday to Leeds when social services called: a placement was closing in ten minutes. Their severely disabled grandchild Ella, then ten months old, would go into local authority care unless they agreed to take her immediately. They said yes without hesitation.

The decision reshapes everything. Overnight, there is an extra person to feed, clothe, and care for—often a child who has experienced trauma or has complex needs. Finances tighten. Health suffers. Family relationships strain. Many kinship carers leave work, sometimes at the explicit request of social services. Clive feared losing his job would mean losing his house, which would mean losing Savannah to foster care. He was fortunate: his school allowed flexible work. He bottle-fed his niece while leading staff training sessions. But he knows from support groups that others have no such safety net.

Leasa and Oly, both in their mid-50s, live in a two-bedroom flat in west London with their own son, their two nephews Jake and Luke, and now a sofa bed in the living room where they have slept for five years. The room is crammed with storage boxes and serves as the boys' homework space. When Oly asked his housing association about moving to a larger flat before the nephews arrived, he was told: "Why are you making your house overcrowded?" The same authority had once rejected him as a foster carer because his home was too small. Leasa works as a nanny during the day. Oly works night shifts. They make it work, but the arrangement required them to fight for every scrap of support they expected would be automatic. Eventually, with a lawyer's help, they secured a larger financial allowance. The nagging feeling remains that they were exploited—that social services relied on their goodwill without adequately preparing them or explaining what help existed.

The financial pressure is real and widespread. Many kinship carers report falling into debt, relying on food banks, sacrificing pensions and savings. Foster carers receive between £170 and £299 per week, depending on location and the child's age, plus months of preparation and ongoing support. Kinship carers typically receive nothing of the kind. Yet research shows kinship care is not only cheaper than residential or foster care—it saves the state £4.3 billion annually—but also more likely to produce better outcomes for children. They retain stronger family bonds and a clearer sense of identity. Lucy Peake, chief executive of Kinship, points out that the government's new three-year pilot scheme, launched earlier this year, offers equal financial allowances to kinship carers in just seven local authorities. It covers approximately 5,000 children. More than 136,000 remain unsupported in the old way.

For all the hardship, many kinship carers speak of profound joy. Alan lies on the floor next to Ella, now nine, singing Beatles songs as she smiles. She is non-verbal and only recently learning to walk, but "she has a way of showing us things," he says with evident pride. Oly watches his nephews laugh from the heart—something they did not do when they first arrived, still in shock from upheaval. Those moments of genuine laughter and embrace fill him. Clive, once asked at conferences to name his greatest achievement, used to cite turning a school around or becoming headteacher at 28. Now he says keeping his niece in the family means more than any professional accolade. The system that placed these children with their relatives under extreme time pressure, with minimal notice and inadequate support, has nonetheless created something real and lasting. Whether that justifies the cost to the carers themselves remains an open question.