I've been the CEO at national charity Kinship since 2015. My Fellowship will focus on ways to improve support for kinship families. I'll be visiting the USA to explore kinship navigator programs. These place kinship care experts in local areas to provide a supportive 'one-stop shop', helping carers to find information and access the support and services they need.

My Fellowship is timely because more children grow up in the care system than in foster care, but support for kinship carers and their children is poorly developed. With the growing focus on kinship care, I am interested in how we develop, support and sustain the kinship care ecosystem, so that families are well supported. Kinship navigator programs are a promising way of doing this with strong evidence of impact, including enabling more children to remain within their family network rather than the care system. This matters because outcomes for young people in kinship care are generally better than in the care system.

The Fellowship is an incredible opportunity for me to explore how kinship navigator programs could be introduced in the UK and I hope to implement learning through Kinship and partners in future.