Why ‘no brainers’ still get a no from government, and how to change that

Last week I went to an extraordinarily moving event by Kinship, launching their #ValueOurLove campaign.

For those who don’t know, kinship carers are family members and friends who care for children rather than them being placed in state care or adopted. So that might be a child going to live with grandparents, uncles or aunties.

According to Kinship’s latest report, there are over 162,000 children in kinship families across England and Wales, and yet they are not entitled to much of the support that they would be as a child in state care, or as an adoptee. Indeed, a shocking 78% of carers said that they do not receive the support they need from their local authority.

But it wasn’t the stats so much that moved me, it was listening to the testimony of real life people. Like the grandmother whose daughter was sectioned and had to turn her life upside down to look after her grandchildren – they called her ‘nana lucky’, because she told the children repeatedly how lucky she was to have them. Or the brave young woman, working long days in a Minister’s office, who stepped up to become the guardian for her two young cousins after their mother tragically died.

Hearing those stories, I couldn’t help but feel emotional. Because we all go from report to report, meeting to meeting, office to office, having policy conversations and strategy conversations and talking to interesting stakeholders. But this was real, and it was obvious what needed to be done, and it just needed someone to do it.

It was, in effect, a ‘no brainer’. Is it better for the welfare of children to stay with relatives who love them instead of going into care? Yes. Is it better for the taxpayer? Yes. Is it better for the relatives themselves? Yes. So why doesn’t the state provide better financial and other support for kinship carers to make sure it is the default option wherever realistically possible?

Unfortunately, as I saw time and time again working on Children’s Social Care in the DfE, something being a no brainer isn’t enough to make it happen. Here’s why:

1. Money. The biggest reason. You could demonstrate that something has a return of 2, 3 or 4 times on investment – but that return will take time to arrive, and HMT have already set your envelope. I could tell someone in the Treasury spending team to give me £100 and that I’d give them £400 back next year, and I promise you 9 times out of 10 they still wouldn’t take the deal. Try and focus asks for money around sweet spot moments like budgets and spending reviews, or it’s going to be much harder.

2. ‘Cut through’. Ministers and civil servants have the same sources of information as you or me – media and anecdote. Even if it’s the most sensible thing in the world – if they don’t know about it, if they don’t really understand it, they can’t do anything about it. With hundreds of things going into Ministers’ boxes each night, how can you make your issue stand out?

3. Priority. Anyone doing anything in government means someone doing something about it rather than doing the thing they were doing before! A policy official needs to draft a submission. A lawyer needs to check the proposed changes. Strategic finance needs to be happy. Comms will have a look too. Being ‘right’ or ‘obvious’ isn’t enough – why should this be a priority? What’s the burning platform? Is this something the public really care about?

Politics can be an immense source of frustration. It can make us sad and angry, leaving us thinking “why aren’t they doing something about it?” But people in government are also human beings, doing their jobs, navigating bureaucracy and frustration of their own. So, as well as shedding a tear and knowing that something is a ‘no brainer’, we still need to do the work to make the ‘system’ come to the same conclusion too.