Sarah Wellard, Director of Policy, Grandparent Plus

As we scramble to find new ways to enhance the wellbeing of families and address the capabilities of parents, all too often we ignore or exclude from services and strategies a massive and increasingly essential resource. Grandparents and the wider family are vital for promoting the wellbeing of children and families, yet they are usually overlooked or taken for granted by both policy makers and practitioners. Grandparents play a pivotal role in providing childcare for working parents, supporting parents and children through difficult times and sometimes taking on the fulltime responsibility of bringing up their grandchildren because the parents are unable to do so.

Grandparents providing childcare

Almost two thirds of Britain’s 14 million grandparents help out with looking after their grandchildren at some point, with one in five grandmothers providing at least 10 hours a week of childcare[i][i] Parents often report that they find grandparent care more reliable, affordable and flexible, because they are willing to take children when they are ill and at times when formal care is not available. Around one in four working families depend on grandparents for childcare, and increasing financial pressures on families and the rising cost of formal childcare is likely to lead to greater numbers of parents turning to grandparents for help.

Recent research on the implications for children’s health and development of grandparental involvement in childcare underlines the importance of recognising and supporting grandparents who are informally caring.A study published last year showed that preschool aged children from more advantaged backgrounds were more likely to be overweight if they were looked after by grandparents and other informal carers than if they were cared for only by a parent – but this did not hold for children from less advantaged backgrounds.It may be that grandparents lack information about healthy nutrition and may not encourage physical activity as much as the parents.Another study found children looked after by grandparents tend to be less school ready and have more difficulties getting on with other children than pre-schoolers who have attended formal childcare, but have better vocabularies[ii][ii].This may reflect grandparents spending more time than other carers talking to children, but less taking them to toddler groups and settings where they have the chance to learn to socialise with other children, and where grandparents do not always feel welcome.Research from the Royal Free and Maudsley hospitals in London[iii][iii] indicates that children with a grandparent involved in their care are less likely be brought to accident and emergency departments with minor conditions not needing treatment, suggesting that grandparents provide helpful reassurance to families with young children. These studies underline the importance of including grandparents as well as parents in strategies aimed at promoting children’s health and wellbeing, including in Sure Start children’s centres.

Grandparents’ role in the lives of teenagers

Generally grandparents’ involvement in family life is highly positive for children and young people. A study by Ann Buchanan and Julia Griggs from the University of Oxford[iv][iv] highlights the continuing and important relationship between teenagers and their grandparents. They found a particularly close relationship between teenagers and maternal grandmothers, with 94% of teenagers whose maternal grandmothers have at least occasional involvement reporting that their grandmother respects what they say, and 84% saying she gives them advice with dealing with problems.More than a third felt able to share issues which they couldn’t talk to parents about.The study showed a positive relationship between having a close relationship with a grandparent and prosocial behaviour, and also strong association between grandparental involvement and fewer adjustment problems in teenagers.

Young people were also significantly more likely to talk about problems to their closest grandparent when they were under pressure from difficulties at home and closeness to a grandparent seemed to protect them from adjustment problems. Again, this study underlines the need to recognise the role grandparents play in young people’s lives in seeking to promote teenagers’ wellbeing, and the potential for grandparents to be a positive influence in their lives.

Grandparents raising their grandchildren

Around 200,000 grandparents and other family members in the UK have become fulltime carers of their grandchildren.Initially, this may be just on a short-term basis, for example because a parent is ill, in rehab or in prison.But often, this becomes a permanent arrangement.As well parental illness, drug or alcohol misuse or imprisonment, common reasons leading to a grandparent becoming the full-time (kinship) carer of a child are the death or disability of a parent, domestic violence and child abuse or neglect.

Research[v][v][vi][vi]into children looked after by grandparents and other kinship carersindicates that many of these children have experienced similar multiple adverse experiences to children who are in care.Yet only a small minority of the estimated 300,000 children living with kinship carers are legally classed as “looked after” children, and few received the same, if any, support from children’s services.

Grandparents Plus’ own research reveals the huge challenges which many kinship carers face, with many experiencing poverty, isolation and lack of support. A survey[vii][vii] of 255 of themembers of our Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Network found that that most carers are struggling on very low incomes at or below the poverty line with only around one in three receiving an allowance from the local authority. Almost thee in 10 say they had to give up work when they took on full-time care while another 29% reduced their paid hours.Nearly half of the carers surveyed are bringing up a child with a disability or special needs, and six in 10 longer term health condition of their own. The low visibility of these families at national and local government level means they are not recognised as a group at risk of poverty and disadvantage, and excluded from local authority child poverty strategies.

A study of older grandparent carers aged 65 and over – estimated to be around 25,000 in total, revealed the extreme reluctance of many carers to engage with children’s services for fear of the children being taken away because they will be judged “too old to care”, and the importance of trusted sources for obtaining support – the wider family, schools, churches and voluntary organisations.Yet voluntary organisations and children’s centres often overlook the needs of this group, and parenting support rarely targets them, despite the additional challenges they may face in parenting second time around when the children have experienced trauma with their birth families and may suffer from emotional problems or foetal alcohol syndrome.

Supporting kinship carers helps keep children out of care, and reduces the risk of poor outcomes for children, yet cuts to both local services and welfare benefits focussed on short-term savings are likely to increase the likelihood of placements breaking, and act as a disincentive to potential carers stepping forward.

The impact of current policy changes

Many of the cuts in public spending currently being implemented will have a big impact on the wider family – for example cuts to the childcare element of Working Tax Credit- and are likely to put much greater pressure on grandparents to help out with childcare, as increasing numbers of working parents are unable to affordable formal care.Housing changes which force people to downsize when their adult children move out will make it harder for low income grandparents to provide respite for parents who are struggling to cope.And kinship carers who have stepped in to bring up vulnerable children are likely to be particularly hard hit by the swathe of welfare reforms which will significantly increase child poverty. The proposed benefit cap for example will hit larger families including kinship carers who have taken in sibling groups or have their own children still at home, and cuts to increased conditionality requirements under Universal Credit making it increasingly difficult for those who are forced to give up work when a child moves in.

We would also like to see the role of the wider families in employment policy, with grandparents able to request flexible working which would support those who are combining work with childcare.We would also like a much more creative approach to parental leave, with parents able to transfer entitlement to grandparents as already happens in Germany, for example if the parent is ill or still in fulltime education.

Conclusion

Despite the vital role which grandparents and the wider family play in underpinning the caring role of parents, or indeed taking on that role themselves, they are largely absent from the policy debate and as a result vulnerable to unintended consequences.It’s time to put the wider family to be put at the heart of policy making, not only in family and children’s policy, but also in areas like housing and employment.