The leading specialist kinship service for Global Majority and dual heritage families
RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS AN ESSENTIAL PATHWAY TOWARDS CHANGE.
Why Your Involvement Counts.
As the only specialist Black Global Majority kinship care organisation, we continue to see a steady increase in requests to collaborate with universities, mainstream organisations, and specialist services that want to learn from our lived experience and perspectives.
Historically, our communities have often been hesitant to engage in research projects. However, we also recognise that if we are not involved, we cannot influence the outcomes. Our voices go unheard, and decisions are made about us without our input. We are often told that meaningful change cannot happen unless we are part of the conversation.... so now we are fully involved.
It is vital that we have platforms where our experiences and insights can help shape the policies and practices that affect how we support our children and one another, and how support is provided to our families. Your voice is important- use it!
The Forgotten 10%
One of our recent and ongoing collaborations with the University of Lancaster focuses on the expereinces of the 10% of people who take out private child proceedings. This is an unusual area and little is known about the reasons why this course of action is taken and more importantly what are the outcomes. This piece of research seeks to find the answers to the questions and more. If you have personal knowledge of taking out private proceedings or know someone who has ask them to get in touch .
Why this project is important?
Important decisions are made every day in the family courts about where children live and who they spend time with. Around 90% of private family law cases are between two parents. The other 10% involve one or more adults who are not the child’s parent, such as grandparents, aunts/uncles, and siblings.
This ‘forgotten 10%’ have been overlooked in policy and family justice reform. Recent research, funded by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, found around 6,500 children and 14,000 adults are involved in ‘non-parent applications’ each year in England and Wales.
To get more information, click the link below.
Experiences of Dual Heritage Children
A first of its kind, we are excited to be collaborating with Cardiff University conducting reserarch into the lived expereinces of dual heritage children in kinship care, a previously unexplored area, but with dual heritage children making a significant percentage of children in care, it's crucial to gain their vies and opinions. In pursuit of gaining this unique insight we are delighted to engage our two newly recruited youth peer researchers who are leading on the recruitment and involvement of other kinship children.
This exciting initative saw the first on site residential take place in Cardif recently with more follow ups planned for the future.
