Raising a relative or friend's child? Did you know you are a Kinship Carer?
Whether you are new to kinship care or have been raising kinship kids for some time there is local support available. Kinship is the leading kinship care charity in England and Wales. They support, informal and advise all kinship carers – the grandparents and siblings, the aunts, uncles, and family friends who step up to raise children when their parents aren’t able to. Locally the charity has been delivering its ground-breaking Sport England funded Kinship Active Programme for the past two years. This programme is delivered in partnership with Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation and Teesside University.
Kinship Active provides a supportive environment allowing kinship families to get more active together. Prior to the Covid pandemic, this programme supported families through face-to-face activities and peer support. The service is currently offering an online programme of physical activity and virtual support groups.
Project workers also provide one-to-one support for families – discussing the specific challenges they face, developing activity plans together, supporting participants to access specialist health services if required and working towards achievable outcomes.
Through building strong local partnerships the project has been able to organise low-cost activities including low-cost swim sessions, free table tennis, walking groups, community café sessions, dance classes and over 130 kinship carers and their children come on day trips for fun activities. Activities are as local as possible to avoid transport costs.
The team can support all kinship families irrelevant of legal order and work closely to support families to make even the smallest of changes to increase their physical activity levels.
You can refer a kinship carer to the Kinship Active programme by contacting Sue Rowe 07943 865586 or Jane Harmer 07943 865601 or by completing a referral form.
Download Kinship Active leaflet
Every week the team provide a new calendar of activity, take a look at this weeks activity (Tue 4 May):
Saturdays are for music-making. Join Family Jam with the team:
