Chief Executive's Blog
The Poor Relations? Why as a society we owe more to the grandparents, siblings and other relatives that take on the care of vulnerable children
15 April 2013
Informal kinship carers have to date been a largely ‘hidden population’ who take on a huge burden from the state in providing care, often at very little notice, for children who would otherwise end up in the care system. I know, after a career spent in delivering services to children and their carers, that the care provided by these relatives - including grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters - and friends can be a very positive solution in which children feel cared for and secure. Nevertheless, these informal kinship carers and the children they look after, remain an overlooked group who experience high levels of poverty and disadvantage with little or no statutory support.
Today, Buttle UK and the University of Bristol are launching the second report of a two-part research study, which provides the most comprehensive picture to date of the children’s perspective of living in informal kinship care and the views of their carers. The findings are illuminating and demonstrate clearly the true cost of informal kinship care and the unacceptably huge challenges that this group face, despite stepping in to provide a loving and secure home for these children.
The majority of the placements in our study arose out of parental drug and alcohol misuse, and most children had suffered neglect and maltreatment. Remarkably however, our research shows these children are now doing well, with a strong attachment to their carers and good levels of academic attainment. It is particularly striking that in the main these children are faring significantly than those placed within the formal care system, which costs the state between £23,500 and £56,000 for each child per year.
However, this comes at a cost. Our research shows that it is often as a consequence of taking on the children that kinship carers are plunged into poverty. These carers have to change their life plans, lose their freedom, and if they’re young, the chance to train for a job. Moreover, they lose friends, marriages, and can become socially isolated. Nearly three-quarters have high rates of long-term health problems and as many as two-thirds are clinically depressed.
I feel the carers own sense of injustice, that they are saving the state money in preventing children from going into care but taking all the burden, financially and emotionally, themselves. Not only that, but as our research shows, they are actually being turned away from Children’s Services, who refuse to support them or the child. Instead, they are left to struggle on their own, living on very low incomes with little or no support from other family members or friends. As one carer in our study said: ‘Successive governments have never ever wanted to acknowledge this underclass of caring that is going on. I can't tell you how hard it's been...and the eternal phrase ‘But this is a private arrangement’.
This is a group who our report found took pride in managing their finances well and making a little go a long way. Many had to give up good jobs to look after grandchildren or siblings, and those that were retired were living on their pensions alone. Well over half (68%) had used savings, taken out loans or borrowed money from friends to buy essential items like clothes, bedding and beds. So rather than take advantage of their strong sense of family values, I would rather see us help them with the huge responsibility they have taken on, and prevent them having to live with extra debt and financial hardship.
So – what can we do to help these ‘hidden’ kinship carers? There is no doubt that urgent action is needed. For this reason, Buttle UK is calling for a national allowance for kinship carers. We believe that giving informal kinship carers adequate financial provision to bring up the children they care for would be an equitable solution – and would probably enable more relatives to take on this role. Some may say that this is wildly unrealistic in the current climate. To them I say that, surely, if the welfare state is there for anyone surely it is for people like these?
The overlooked change in the Government’s
welfare reforms
2 April 2013
Yesterday marked a milestone in welfare reform. Changes taking effect from 1st April and throughout the rest of the year will directly affect the lives of the families we support. The coverage, particularly in the last few days, has focused on the “bedroom tax”, the changes to who pays council tax and the Universal Credit. But there is an important change that has sparked considerably less public comment. Yesterday, the discretionary social fund – that provides for some of the poorest, most vulnerable members of our communities at times of
stress and distress – has quietly passed away.
The DWP has now downed tools and will take no more applications for Crisis Loans for Living Expenses (awarded when someone has insufficient resources to prevent serious risk to their health and safety)or Community Care Grants (awarded to help vulnerable individuals and families live independently in the community). Instead, it has divided three fifths of the funding for these schemes between 152 English local authorities and the Scottish and Welsh governments and asked them to meet those needs locally, in the best way they see fit.
The job is not an easy one. As veteran grant makers we know that making decisions about who to help, in what way and to what extent are incredibly tough when your budget is tight and the level of need among your applicants is higher than you can ever hope to meet. Even the most innovative and imaginative programme designs cannot get around the fact that these new localized schemes have been allotted funding well below what was available to their predecessors at the DWP to carry out the same job.
At the same time, logic tells us that demand on these local welfare schemes is going to be high. As other welfare reforms put increasing pressures on family budgets, demanding more of them in rent and council tax payments and leaving less to live on, more people are likely to find themselves in need of “exceptional” support on top of their small weekly income.
As it stands today, its unclear how this new local patchwork of provision for those at their most vulnerable will pan out. Will the new schemes prove accessible, responsive, flexible? How will the principles set down in guidance work out in practice? How will they balance high demand and limited budgets? Will they ultimately prove to be better at the job than the old, much maligned but heavily relied upon discretionary social
fund? And most importantly, will it improve or worsen the experiences and wellbeing of those in need?
As a charity making grants to families in need our work inevitably butts up against that of the social fund everyday. Families refused Community Care Grants and Crisis Loans or given insufficient awards to meet their needs often come to us for support and tell us their stories. The sheer number of applications we receive acts as a good weathervane to tell us how well the “ultimate safety net” is doing. That puts us in a good position to start answering some of these questions and - where things go wrong - help local authorities to put them right. In the months to come we will be keeping a close eye on how local welfare provision is doing, and we will make sure the voices of the families we support are heard.
In the meantime, I want to use this blog to take a closer look at how welfare reform combined with a struggling economy is already affecting the vulnerable families we support and to tell just a few of the thousands of stories we hear every year.
How to get things done in tough times – the abiding inspiration of Frank Buttle
11 February 2013
Today marks the day – 60 years ago - when the founder of Buttle UK, the Reverend Frank Buttle, died. In that same year the first meeting of Trustees took place and began the work of realising the vision and legacy of this remarkable man: to ‘launch into life’ 1000 children a year from poverty. He spent most of his life accumulating a fortune, specifically to make this idea a reality. His target was £1m, an enormous sum in his time, and of which he was only £80k short when he died.
60 years later, and continuing to give grants to many thousands of children and young people, everyone at Buttle UK still strives each day to deliver on Frank's ambitions. As we are all too aware the need that Frank Buttle saw back in the 1920’s and 30’s has not disappeared, far from it. One in three children live in poverty in the UK today and it still blights their health, wellbeing and life chances, just as it did in Frank Buttle’s day. And there is every reason to believe that our funding will be in greater need in the coming years. Although we have been able to give out more funding since the start of the recession (giving around £3m each year in grants compared to £2.6m in 2006/07) new external income is hard to find, and the alternative is to spend more of the capital of the endowment Frank created, as well as the income.
These are certainly challenging times but Frank Buttle remains an inspiration. This anniversary year is an opportunity to reflect on what all those that have been associated with the organisation over the years, have managed to achieve with his legacy. However, for me personally, it is also an opportunity to revisit his story and remind myself of just what can be achieved, in preparation for challenges ahead.
Frank Buttle, a clergyman from 1906 to his death in 1953, was what you might call a social visionary. He was an early pioneer of organised adoption for orphaned children, and the first campaigner against the practice of ‘baby farming’ (the taking in of babies to nurse for payment, and then adoption, often from unmarried mothers) but ultimately his focus changed and he recognised “the need for helping unmarried mothers.” He saw this as a way of keeping children with their main carer. This insight reflects Buttle UK’s own continued belief that intervening early, and therefore preventing the need for a child to experience care, is often the best option.
For this reason, during the last year, we have put a great deal of energy into the work we do to support children from very disrupted backgrounds to access boarding school. Increasing numbers of key people in government, local authorities and the boarding sector itself are beginning to understand the value in this approach too. I can therefore see that meaningfully expanding the practice in the future is a real possibility.
Frank was also, what today might be called, a social entrepreneur. Much of the fortune he built to launch Buttle UK came from investments he made in small securities, tithes and property which he financed through “returnable donations” – a concept which is now at the heart of much of the drive for new social investment products. He could spot an opportunity, and exploit it. One of the 850 securities he amassed was in Crow Catchpole (Holdings) Ltd, a tar distilling company which he bought for £9000 in the 1920s, and which in the early 1960’s the trustees sold for £500,000 – the company having become Tarmac in the meantime!
He was considered a miser, rarely spending money on himself as he amassed money to found the charity. While I believe, just as Frank did, of the need to ‘speculate to accumulate’, we work hard to keep our operation lean. We have invested in IT systems which has meant we can ensure our ‘emergency’ grant applications are processed quickly and effectively. We do this with the same staff complement as 10 years ago despite the volume of applications being processed increasingly significantly.
Frank Buttle’s ideal was that every case should be examined personally. Despite receiving 15,000 applications a year we stick to this principle. We have adapted our systems to do so, but we believe that retaining a ‘flexible, human approach’ in our grant giving is core to who we are, because we know it makes the investment we are making in a child or young person most effective. Last year we evaluated a pilot grant programme that used highly personalised grants to support long term unemployed young people back into education and work. The results have been very impressive with 46% of the young people supported in work 6 months after their grant was made. Our results are certainly better than the first published results of the Government’s Work Programme.
It is clear from the published accounts of his life that Frank was not afraid to upset people in his drive to deliver his vision. The shabby figured cleric was referred to by some as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” as he prowled the City of London. The chairman of one of the companies in which he was the majority shareholder, and who he visited regularly in order to check on his investment, regarded him a “terrible old man”. His example provides ample demonstration that you can’t always hope to be liked if you want to get things done.
Frank Buttle lived through the depression and the formation of the Welfare State. Today we are grappling with recession and how to help those in need when the benefits of the Welfare State are declining. Whatever your views on how to address the latter issue in particular, there is no doubt that times are going to be tough for a lot of families for a long time to come. As an organisation our funding is always focused on the needs of the child and not on considerations of whether the parents or carers are ‘strivers’ or ‘shirkers’. But however important our individual funding is for the children and young people that receive it, Buttle UK has always taken a longer term view. Over the years we have funded or commissioned studies on dyslexia, the impact of adoption, the training of social workers and more recently the experience of care leavers in higher education – which has led to our award winning Quality Mark. Our latest project looks at the experiences of children and their carers living in informal kinship care arrangements. Something which Frank would have undoubtedly found interesting and important.
So, this year really does give us a timely opportunity to celebrate what Frank Buttle achieved in founding Buttle UK, the thousands of vulnerable children that have been supported through the funds he raised, and to galvanise ourselves for the challenges that lie ahead. We hope that you will join us in a range of exciting activities and events over the year to celebrate 60 years.
Long may Frank’s vision, compassion, canniness and entrepreneurialism be our inspiration to give children and young people living in poverty a fighting chance.
