Last week, Richard hosted the second meeting of the Bedfordshire Kinship Carers Group, bringing together carers, local council portfolio holders and MPs and their staff from across the county to discuss ways we can support our Kinship Carers on both a local and a national level.
Richard Fuller MP said:
Kinship Carers UK are like foster carers, but rather than being assigned to a family on a Council register, the children are placed with a relative, their kin. These relatives take the children in out of love for their family but they need support every bit as much as a regular foster family would. Some of this is financial, some of it is educational, and some of it is emotional. There are a number of ways that MPs and Councils can help and we discussed a number of them during the meeting.
I was pleased to learn that Bedford Borough Council and Luton Borough Council already do a lot to support kinship carers locally and there was agreement on the call to work with Central Bedfordshire Council to bring them into the fold and deliver better support for carers and families. The Government have recently appointed a Kinship Carers' Ambassador and we agreed to invite them to the next meeting to discuss national issues such as funding from Central Government in more detail.
My thanks go out to Councillor Jane Walker, Portfolio Holder for Bedford Borough Council, Councillor Umme Ali, Portfolio Holder for Luton Borough Council, and Sarah Owen MP for Luton North for attending the meeting along with a number of kinship carers and staff from other Bedfordshire MPs' offices. I look forward to our next meeting later this year.
Richard first met Bedfordshire Kinship Carers in March 2024 and organised the first county-wide meeting in October 2024.
