By phone or email
To speak to an adviser, please call our free and confidential advice line 0808 801 0366 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 3pm, excluding Bank Holidays). Or you can ask us a question via email using our advice enquiry form.
Are you a parent, kinship carer relative or friend of a child who is involved with, or who needs the help of, children’s services in England? We can help you understand processes and options when social workers or courts are making decisions about your child’s welfare.
Our advice service is free, independent and confidential.
To speak to an adviser, please call our free and confidential advice line 0808 801 0366 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 3pm, excluding Bank Holidays). Or you can ask us a question via email using our advice enquiry form.
Our online advice forums are an anonymous space where parents and kinship carers (also known as family and friends carers) can get legal and practical advice, build a support network and learn from other people’s experiences.
Our get help and advice section has template letters, advice sheets and resources about legal and social care processes. On Monday and Wednesday afternoons, you can use our webchat service to chat online to an adviser.
And when children cannot live with their parents, children’s services departments should seek to place them in the care of a suitable family members.
There are more than 180,000 children across the United Kingdom being raised by relatives or friends. This is known as kinship care. Kinship carers may be grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, or family friends.
Research shows that as a group, children raised by kinship carers do better than, or at least as well as, those living with unrelated foster carers. Research has shown many benefits to children being raised in kinship care. This includes benefits to emotional well-being and how children do at school.
Private family arrangements
A close relative steps in to raise a relative’s child without the prior involvement of children’s services and without matters being considered by the Family Court.
Private fostering
Someone who is not a close relative of the child and not already an approved foster carer looks after a child for 28 days or more and will then be regarded as private foster carer.
‘Lives with’ child arrangements order
Under this court order the child will live with the kinship carer named in the order and the carer will share parental responsibility with the parents.
Special guardianship
Kinship foster care
Sometimes a kinship care arrangement involves a child becoming looked after by children’s services. But with the child living with a relative or friend who becomes a foster carer for them. This might be under a care order, or under a voluntary arrangement. The carer is known as a kinship foster carer.
Adoption
Adoption is unusual in kinship care arrangements because it changes the legal relationship with the child’s parents. They legally cease to be the child’s parents.
It also affects who can make decisions about the child. To find out more about kinship care and about these different types of kinship care arrangement go to our Kinship carers page.
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