Alma Economics was commissioned by the Family Rights Group (FRG) to explore the costs and benefits of introducing changes to employment rights for kinship carers, particularly employment leave. To that end, we first carried out a thorough desk-based review to explore paid employment leave policies in the UK and abroad that could be applied to kinship carers. We then created a shortlist of viable policy options refined in collaboration with FRG and bespoke Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) models to explore the costs and benefits of each policy option across different funding levels and eligibility criteria. Our models included both impacts on the Exchequer and wider benefits and costs to society.

The results suggest that all proposed policy options would yield significantly more benefits than costs for all examined durations and eligibility criteria. At the end of the project and in addition to a detailed report, we created an Excel model that functions as a lasting tool, allowing users to input different durations, eligibility criteria, and employment pay to explore alternative policy scenarios. Our report and model will be crucial in FRG’s efforts to secure paid employment leave for kinship carers in line with birth and adoptive parents. 

➥ Read the report here.