Caitríona and Séamus, as a family support worker and social worker respectively, could have been considered well-placed to cope with caring for vulnerable, grieving children. Often kinship care arises from sudden trauma like this and it’s “not what you anticipate in your life. “But taken-for-granted family support is not effective family support, and that is why Kinship Care Ireland is delighted that we are now able to put some infrastructure in place and develop a response.”Caitríona feels that, five years on, kinship care is now getting on the political agenda. The couple became her kinship carers and, down the line, formalised it as a relative fostering arrangement. “We had nobody to say you are going to have these feelings…“Kinship carers are no different than foster carers,” she adds.

Source: The Irish Times December 22, 2020 06:00 UTC