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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.
What is a ‘lives with’ child arrangements order?
This is an order that says who a child is to live with. Their carer will be able to make day-today decisions. And they will have parental responsibility for the child for so long as the order is in place. There are some limits on how they may use their parental responsibility. For example, the kinship carer may not change the child’s surname or take the child out of the country for more than one month unless others with parental responsibility consent.
Does someone need to be assessed if they want to care for a child under a child arrangements order?
If a kinship carer asks the court to make a child arrangements order specifying that a child lives with them, the court will ask children’s services (if they are involved) or Cafcass (if children’s services are not involved) to prepare a section 7 report. This will make recommendations to the court as to where it would be best for the child to live.
When making a child arrangements order, the court must presume, unless it is proved otherwise, that the involvement of the child’s parents in their life will further their welfare.
How can a kinship carer apply for a child arrangement order? Will free legal advice be available?
Our Common questions sections has advice about this. See this FAQ: Is legal aid available to apply for a child arrangements order or a special guardianship order? What is involved in applying for one of these orders?
Will help be available from a child’s parents if a kinship carer is caring for a child under a child arrangements order?
The child’s parents remain financially responsible for the child throughout the time that they are living with a kinship carer. But:
The child maintenance calculator tool may be helpful too. This can help to see what the right level of support may be. It can helpful even if the child maintenance service is not being used.
Below we explain two ways families can get support from local services and agencies. The first is via Early help. The second is via children’s services where the child being raised is a child in need.
Early help
Early help aims for agencies to work together to provide support as soon as problems emerge. This is because tackling a problem early can stop things getting worse. Education (schools, nurseries), housing, and health services are all examples of agencies. Early help can be given to a family with a child up to age 18. So, the child may be a baby, toddler, at primary school or a teenager.
Early help services may be needed for different reasons. It may be that a child needs extra support for their physical development. Or, needs some help for their emotional well-being for example.
Government statutory guidance called Working Together 2018 says practitioners working with families should be alert to families who may need early help services.
The early help process starts with an early help assessment.
Social workers are not involved in early help assessments or providing early help services. But sometimes they ask early help services to provide assistance to children and families they are working with.
See our Early help page for more information. This includes FAQs explaining:
Child in need
There is a general legal duty on children’s services departments to work to keep children safe, well cared for and, at home unless this would place them at risk. To help achieve this, children’s services must provide a range and level of services in their local area to help children ‘in need’. And to help their families (see section 17(1) of the Children Act 1989).
A child in need is a child who needs extra support or services to help them achieve or maintain ‘a reasonable standard of health or development’ (see section 17(1) of the Children Act 1989). All disabled children are classed as children in need.
Where a child or family may need this extra support, children’s services should carry out a child in need assessment. This aims to:
Local children’s services departments have their own measures for deciding which children are in need enough to get services. These should be set out in a local threshold document. A local threshold document helps social workers decide if a child is likely to get any extra help or services. The threshold document (or the measures in it) may be called ‘eligibly criteria’ in some areas. Slightly different measures or ‘thresholds’ apply in different local areas.
See our Child in need page for important information and advice about:
What if children’s services won’t assess a child’s needs? Or they refuse to provide support?
Sometimes children’s services refuse to assess a child’s needs. Or say services are not needed. They may say the child is not ‘enough in need’ because they are safely living with their kinship carer. In this situation a kinship carer can:
See our Child in need page for further information and advice
Will children’s services pay an allowance to a kinship carer raising a child under a child arrangements order?
Children’s services can pay an allowance to someone in this situation. The allowance is towards costs of ‘accommodation and maintenance’ of the child. So, this may be day to day costs including housing costs.
How can someone find out more about the local child arrangements order (or residence order) allowance? And is there anything that it is important to asked about these allowances?
To find out more about the local child arrangements order allowance and to apply it is a good idea to:
‘..some types of placement for a child carry a significant financial disadvantage in comparison with others or, worse, would impose such a financial strain on a carer that they would be forced to choose another type of placement’.
Does having a child arrangements order (or residence order) allowance affect benefit entitlement?
Child arrangements order allowance (and residence order allowance) is disregarded when assessing the amount of Universal Credit a kinship carer receives. This means it is not taken into account; it will not affect the amount they get.
The allowance is also ignored when ignored when income support, jobseekers’ allowance or employment support allowance is worked out.
For more information about benefits and kinship carer see advice sheet 2h) Welfare benefits and kinship care on our Advice sheets page.
What type of help for kinship carers will be available in a local area?
In England, all children’s services department should have a family and friends care policy.
Children’s services should publish information in leaflets and on their websites about the services on offer. This should include information about how to access the services. Kinship carers can ask children’s services for a copy of the policy and for any leaflets.
A copy of this policy can be requested from the local council. Or it may be on their website. Or, follow this link on our website to see policies that have been shared with us.
This is set out in Chapter 5 of the Family and Friends Care: Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities. This is guidance that should be followed unless there is good reason not to.
For advice about what do to if services are not available in your local area see our Common questions section back on the main Kinship carer page.
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