Sun 10 December 2017
Finally, a call for financial support for kinship carers. We’ve campaigned for years to end the discrimination that pays strangers for foster care but not grandparents who often have to fight to stop children being adopted. But what about supporting mothers so children can stay with them? Women, 80% of whom are mothers, suffer 86% of austerity cuts, including benefit sanctions which drive thousands to food banks; 56% of single parents (overwhelmingly mothers) with jobs live in poverty; single-mother families are 47% of the statutory homeless and nearly three-quarters of families affected by the benefit cap.
Section 17 of the 1989 Children Act instructs local authorities to “promote the upbringing of children by their families” by “providing accommodation and giving assistance in kind or in cash”. The Care Act 2014 entitles disabled mothers to extra help. Why are these entitlements rarely implemented? The 40% cut in “early intervention” highlighted by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is not the only reason. An ideology of blaming mothers even for the domestic violence they suffer, devaluing the child-mother relationship regardless of its impact on children, promoting forced adoptions and privatisation of children services, has resulted in nearly 90,000 children in care (England and Scotland). In some working-class areas, 50% of children are being referred to social services.
In 2016, ruling against a forced adoption, the European court of human rights said that article 8 (respect for private and family life) placed the state under a “positive obligation” to keep families together. It blamed “public and private services provided by ‘saviours’” for “child maltreatment and discrimination”. Mothers and kinship carers picket London’s family court every month demanding to be reunited with their children. They ask: when will they get the support they are legally entitled to?
Nina Lopez Support not Separation
Micheleine Kane Scottish Kinship Care Alliance
Kim Sparrow Single Mothers’ Self-Defence