My Sister’s Daughter

When Laura's sister could no longer care for her daughter, Laura had a few hours to decide. If she said yes, she would become a parent again overnight, no training, no paid leave, no warning. If she said no, the little girl would go into care.

She said yes. Most families do.

My Sister's Daughter weaves Laura's story, told through the small, exhausting, tender details of a life rearranged, with the voice of Jo, now in her forties, looking back at her own childhood in kinship care. When Jo's mother died, a quiet constellation of adults closed around her: a stepfather, grandparents, aunts. Nobody called it kinship care, it didn’t have a name then. They just stepped in, and stayed.

Together, Laura and Jo illuminate a world that is largely invisible, not because it is rare, but because it is so deeply woven into how families survive. There are over 130,000 children in kinship care in England and Wales right now. Most are there because someone said yes in a moment of crisis, with no time to think and very little support to follow.

This is a programme about what that decision really means for the children who receive it, and for the adults who give it.

It’s also about what it leaves behind, for the people who care, and for the children who grow up inside it.

Produced and presented by Jo Meek
Executive Producer - Eloise Whitmore
A Naked production for BBC Radio 4