Discussion 1: Households and families: different family types

Q1. How might the increasing levels of family households with one dependent child impact on families and what might this mean for services?

• Services to help socialising in the early years eg toddler groups/childminding etc.
• Increase in housing stock as more smaller households
• Increased requirement for adult social care in subsequent generations
• Caring responsibilities for older parents
• Services needed for developing socialising opportunities for very young only children
• How does 'first child' parenting differ from the parenting of subsequent children? Is parenting first time round harder?
• Childcare for children with disabilities to stop isolation
• Is speech and language development affected by being an only child?
• Financial supports - maternity pay, childcare costs
• Health support after childbirth
• Pressure on parents to be 'the sibling' - play etc
• Generational pressures, aging communities - impact for future services providing additional support to older service users due to aging - fewer young people
• What about non-dependent children living at home?
• Possible increase in adoption and fostering from a family with only one child
• Housing? Bedroom tax and need to downsize - impact on play/garden

Q2. What does the increasing number of children in kinship care mean for families and services? How should we best support kinship carers?

• Need a decent income - DWP/LA
• Supportive childcare to remain in work
• Social needs assessment available with obligations for informal carers
• Support with contact issues
• Mediation /family support availability
• Kinship care order - guidance needs to support informal kinship carers with financial/parenting/information, connectedness to the communities - LA and national benefit
• Support and information on assessment/trauma/family dynamics
• Cross-cutting and collaborative services to the same house: health, social care, children's services
• Kinship care is cheaper than formal care which means that money can be put into other services
• Tricky for kinship carers to access the right support, kinship care can result in fragmented families and children growing up without their siblings
• Can be highly complex arrangements
• Kinship care is generally a good thing, however sometimes it is not appropriate and kinship carers can be refused formal kinship care status as they do not meet criteria
• Most LA now funding kinship carers
• All the evidence suggests that children prefer to be with their families
• Difficulty for kinship carers in the teenage years:   
  • Identity issues
  • Technology
  • Teenage behaviour
• Formal kinship carers get access to services but professionals persuade families to try to work things out - is this helpful?
• Some kinship carers are not suitable to be kinship carers - past failures to care for their own children
• Very difficult for kinship carers who look after disabled children to get access to services
• Monitoring/reviews/assessments - not for financial gain
• Who are the kinship carers? Grandparents/siblings?
• Is this in the best interest of the child?
• Childcare support so the kinship carer can still work
• Is this an increase or has the collection of data just started?
• Isolation/time for meetings/appointments etc
• Role confusion for children
• Social impact (children not to be a burden)
• Aging carers - death/sickness/illness - loss for children
• Way forward:   
  • Financial support
  • Social support
  • Networking
  • Out of school care
  • Parenting programmes
• Formal/informal - no equality in services
• Stigma for children

Q.3 How can services support grandparent carers, including lone grandparents and those with long-term conditions?

• Supporting grandparents - what services can they access:   
  • Grandparent who is looking after a child will potentially have no access to services
  • Compromised assessments for kinship care placements versus foster care placements
• Technology divide, no support for dealing with complex contact issues. Contact available through social media channels with extended family and siblings can be problematic
• Emotional support - high level of complexity and issues with permanence
• Support services for children to help grandparent - health issues impacting on gran taking child to park/cinema etc
• Long term funding for befriending/mentoring services
• Sustainable funding - impact of funding cuts
• Access to information about keeping child safe eg internet safety
• Respite
• Financial strain on pensions - financial support provided
• Childcare available for lone grandparents including tax credits
• Investment over holiday periods (summer and easter)
• Flexicare - Alexandra service provides care for children at flexible times eg before/after school, evenings, weekends
• Review placing younger children with aging/ill kinship carers. Continuous support, assessment and communication with child about circumstances

Q.4 There is a continuing pattern of delayed childbearing with fertility rates highest for women aged 19 -25 and 30 -34. However, there are wide variations across local authority areas with significantly higher rates of teenage pregnancy in some areas. Do these differences in the age of child bearing have implications for how we deliver services?

• Knock on effect of older mothers and support from grandparents including childcare
• Standards of living better when child bearing delayed
• Parents judged whether older or younger
• Less benefits for young teenage mums
• There are constraints on services due to criteria specific funding
• Barriers for both young and old
• Cost implications to get services eg finances for transport