Thousands of grandparents a year give up work to look after grandchildren

The study by the charity Grandparents Plus reveals that 60,000 grandparents, the equivalent of 9,000 per year or 25 every day, have given up work to care for their grandchildren, only to face a lack of recognition and support from government.

According to the charity, around 200,000 grandparents, older siblings, aunts, uncles and other relatives in the UK are bringing up 300,000 children whose own parents can no longer fulfil the role due to death, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, illness and imprisonment.

The report, ‘Giving up the day job?’ says that the demands of raising a vulnerable child coupled with a lack of entitlement to parental leave and difficulties in finding flexible work means that many carers have no choice but to give up their job.

Of those carers who have given up work, four out of ten are now reliant on welfare benefits as most do not receive any allowances from their local authority.

Grandparents Plus is calling on the Government, children’s services and employers to take action to reduce the number of grandparents and kinship carers who are forced to give up work when they take on the care of a child.

The charity wants to see:

• Entitlement for kinship carers to take paid leave when they take on full-time care of a child.
• Extension of unpaid parental leave to kinship carers up to the child’s 18th birthday.
• Transferable maternity leave if the mother or father is unable to look after a baby.
• The right to request flexible working extended to all workers.
• Local authorities to fully implement the Statutory Guidance on Family and Friends Care and to respect their obligations to assess carers and pay financial allowances.
• The introduction of a National Financial Allowance for kinship carers who look after a child for more than 28 days.

Sam Smethers, chief executive of Grandparents Plus, said, ‘Grandparents and other relatives do the right thing for their families, stepping in to care for vulnerable children. Yet they are driven to give up their jobs because they are not entitled to parental leave, even though they are acting as the child’s parent. It makes absolutely no sense for the carer or the taxpayer for them to give up work unnecessarily and be forced into a lifetime on benefits as a result.’

Yesterday grandparents and kinship carers from across the country attended a national summit in Westminster hosted by Grandparents Plus.

Participants met with children’s minister Tim Loughton, local authority lead members for children’s services and David Simmonds, chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, to call for better support and recognition of the care they provide.

The summit was the start of a national month of action by grandparents and kinship carers who say they have become ‘forgotten families’, with their contribution unrecognised by the state.