Sharon and Dave's story

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While research shows that many kinship carers across the country can feel ‘invisible’, a couple from Barrow who are raising their granddaughter says the support they’ve received has been excellent.

Sharon and Dave (not their real names) have been caring for their 8-year-old granddaughter for three and a half years. Sharon said: “Of course there has been lots of ups and downs in that time but the support has been excellent. We attend the fostering support groups, the kinship coffee and chat sessions, we have access to lots of online training and the social workers in the kinship team are always there to offer advice and signpost us to support.”

As younger grandparents, both Sharon and Dave still work, and so they have had to make some significant sacrifices in order to care for their granddaughter, but they both agree that they ‘wouldn’t have it any other way’. 

Sharon said: “We were always very close to our granddaughter – we saw her most days – but it was still a shock when she came to live with us. I remember speaking to another lady at a support group who cared for three of her grandchildren and I thought that she put it really well when she said ‘I feel like I have been robbed of being a grandmother’. 

“But we don’t focus on the negatives – we are just so happy to still have our granddaughter in our lives and our family. Parenting again at our age gives us an incentive to stay active; with trips to the park and regular holidays in our campervan. 

“The most rewarding thing for us is to see how well our granddaughter is doing at school and to see her making friends and feeling settled with us. It hasn’t all been easy but we’ve found that attending the support groups and meeting other people in the same situation has been such a help and we’ve had lots of advice which has been invaluable.”