EU Kinship Carers Project

A paper just published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine has found that kinship care brings many benefits, but that children remain at risk of developing substance misuse problems in their teenage years.

Adolescents in Kinship Care need additional support

The American research carried out by academics from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center, Dallas, studied over 1,300 children who had gone into kinship care placements as a result of maltreatment.

The researchers found that, in comparison to foster carers, kinship carers were significantly less likely to receive financial support, parenting training or to have peer support groups they could turn to.

However, following up the children three years later the researchers found that they were more likely to still be in the same placement, less likely to have behavioural problems and fewer mental health problems.

The researchers do report that adolescents in kinship care may be at higher risk for substance use and pregnancy.

From our perspective this research reinforces the need to support kinship carers and those in these placements not only when they first enter care, but also to target support during adolescence.

The paper says:

Our findings indicate that kinship caregivers need greater support services… The findings also indicate that kinship care may be associated with a reduced risk of ongoing behavioral and social skills problems and decreased use of mental health therapy and psychotropic medications. Conversely, adolescents in kinship care have higher odds of reported substance use and pregnancy. These findings suggest that increased supervision and monitoring of the kinship environment and increased caregiver support services are urgently needed to improve outcomes of children in kinship care.

This call for greater support echoes what the carers we spoke to for the EU Kinship Carers Project told us.

They were very clear that they found managing this period of the children’s lives difficult. One carer admitted:

“I cut her hair because I was so angry, maybe I was wrong. (….) But punishment does not work, she is not afraid of anything.”

Another told us:

“I’m really scared when he goes to the high school, he is easily led and with him trying to find a new bunch of friends I dread to think about what he might do to be accepted.”

Our response

In Lithuania the project adapted and piloted a parenting programme that had been previously implemented in Sweden. The programme has been designed to be delivered over 5 sessions, with the aim at giving kinship carers the skills to prevent their children being harmed by drugs.

In Italy we worked with kinship carers to develop a parent and carer focused drug prevention intervention to be delivered in a school context. The programme is designed to be delivered over four 2 hour sessions. It used stories chosen by psychologists to “describe” some of the way the children and the parents, go through the evolution of the family system. Following each story the participants reflected on the learning they took from the situations described.