Introduction

In the first chapters of this book, I argued for the need to recognize the dynamic contingencies and ambivalent complexities of ‘family’ for people with care experience. Continuing that discussion, this chapter considers how the boundaries of family are configured and reconfigured over space and time, drawing on narratives of kinship and family connection that span families of origin and experiences of placement in care. Thinking across these accounts, we see how meanings of ‘family’ may be simultaneously constant and fluid. Mason's (2018) account of affinities sets out the idea of ineffable kinship, which she defines as ‘a something that is in connection, with a charge that feels fixed, immutable and elemental’ (p 59). Some of the narratives detailed in this chapter resonate with that definition and show how understandings of family connections can endure despite conflict and complex disruptions. At the same time, as Mason writes in the epigraph to this chapter, the examples presented here show how understandings of kinship – of ‘who counts’ as family – may also ‘segue and blur in and out of one another’ (Mason, 2018, p 111), shifting over time.

Attention to the complexities of ‘who counts’ as family has both practical and theoretical value. Above all, a nuanced conceptualization of the diversity of family connectedness is necessary for policy and practice efforts to support people in navigating the complexities of their family relationships, both in and after care (see Holmes et al, 2020).