Regulation 24 placement

This is a legal regulation that allows children’s services to place a child with a family member or friend in an emergency. Children’s services will have to carry out certain basic checks about the family member’s home life. They will need to do a brief assessment of their ability to care for and protect the child. But the regulation allows the placement to continue for up to 16 weeks while a full assessment is completed. This timeframe can be extended once, by eight weeks, to a maximum of 24 weeks.

The full assessment must be completed during this time.

These placements are authorised by Regulation 24 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010.