Kinfest

Kinship Care

Across the country there are estimated to be 300,000 children who cannot be looked after by their birth parents, who are being looked after by the wider family (data provided by Grandparents Plus). There are many reasons for this from death of the parents, to ill health, disability, or because of abuse or neglect due to a number of factors, often drugs or alcoholism.

Most people think that when a child is removed from a family they go into foster care and are looked after by strangers. This isn’t always the case.

Kinship care is different.

Kinship Children are looked after by the wider family or friends, there are estimated to be 200,000 kinship carers in the UK.
Kinship carers regularly don’t get the financial, practical and emotional help that would be offered to regular foster carers and find themselves out of their depth navigating the social and legal systems.
Kinship carers may be expected to give up work, move house and pay for equipment for the children brought into their care.
Quite often kinship carers find themselves out of pocket and their lives having been turned upside down.
They can feel isolated from their friends, feel like they are different and that they have nowhere to turn for help and advice.

Data sourced from members own comments and recollections as discussed on the support forums, this is a closed site and access is strictly limited to kinship carers only.

Who we are

Kinfest is a Registered Charity number 1171491 and is run entirely by volunteer kinship carers, all funds raised are used to fund future Kinfest events.

The current Kinfest Trustees are Vicki O’Leary, Janellen Redington, Mathew Bushell, Rob Pitman, Anna Clough and Neil Stow.

What we do (Aims/Goals)

The aim of Kinfest is to alleviate the isolation felt by kinship children and their carers and ‘sharers’. They do this by providing opportunities for them to share recreational time together so that they may support each other and create memories together as a family unit, helping to promote bonds within the wider family; as well as meeting and becoming part of a wider social support network of over 1000 members. This is done through an annual holiday, day trips and social events, as well as an online support forum.

Kinfest’s annual holiday originated from the combined desire to share a holiday by kinship carers from the online support group with their children. The first holiday site in Skegness was quickly moved to another local site where facilities were more appropriate to the needs of the group. However since then the annual Summer Kinfest has started to move around, from Skegness to Tattershall to Mablethorpe, always fairly central in the UK.