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This article presents a few key considerations from Community Care Inform Children’s guide to kinship care, which explains the different types of kinship placement and advises social workers on when to consider a kinship placement option. Inform Children subscribers can access the full guide here.
This guide was written by Philip Heslop, senior lecturer in social work at Northumbria University.
Kinship care refers to arrangements in which children live with relatives or close family friends connected with the child.
Looking after children through kinship care is not a new phenomenon; it very likely predates caring for children through foster care.
In many cultures, kinship care is a usual way to arrange childcare and support parents’ care for children when, for instance, they are out at work. In some other cultures, it is most likely to occur when parents are unable to care for children themselves.
For many, relatives are the preferred option for children who cannot live with birth parents, because it maintains children’s connections, attachments and identity with their families.
Types of kinship care
There are two distinct variations of kinship care within the UK – formal and informal arrangements.
Informal kinship care
Most kinship care arrangements are informal.
This occurs when a person with parental responsibility (PR) decides that a child for whom they are responsible can be looked after by another person on a temporary or more permanent basis, without the involvement of the local authority or the courts.
Through this private arrangement, parents retain PR and remain legally responsible for the child. While informal kinship carers make day-to-day decisions, they effectively have few or no legal powers, and the parent can reclaim the child’s care at any time.
Formal kinship care
Formal care arrangements include cases where a looked-after child is being cared for by a family member or friend who has been approved as a local authority foster carer.
Recent trends in the UK have seen a marked increase in kinship placements for children looked after by local authorities (Ofsted, 2024). This is only likely to increase in future with the emphasis on involving wider family networks and allocating more resources to kinship care in the government’s children’s social care reforms.
It is noteworthy that such kinship foster care arrangements may have legal consequences in terms of local authority liability. In DJ v Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council & Anor [2024] EWCA Civ 841, the Court of Appeal confirmed that a local authority can be vicariously liable for unlawful actions committed by foster carers who are related to the child. A summary of this case can be found here.
Formal kinship care is also seen to refer to carers who have formalised their arrangements through court orders – such as a special guardianship order (SGO) or child arrangements order. In such cases, the child may or may not have been previously looked after.
The line between informal and formal kinship care
Local authorities do not have a duty to assess informal kinship care arrangements. However, the 2024 Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance on kinship care states that if it appears that services may be necessary to safeguard the welfare of the child, the council should use the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families to assess, among other matters, whether the arrangements are appropriate to meet the needs of individual children (page 14).
The evidence suggests informal arrangements often involve children’s services, with children being placed through some negotiation between social workers and family/friends (Aziz et al, 2012), but often without ongoing support or any comprehensive assessment.
In some cases, where a child is in an informal kinship care arrangement, the local authority will need to consider whether the child should become accommodated under section 20 of the Children Act 1989, thereby becoming looked after.
The DfE statutory guidance on kinship care states that such decisions will need to be made on a “case-by-cases basis”, based on whether the child appears to be in need and require accommodation for one of the reasons set out in section 20(1) or section 20(3) of the Children Act.
These are that:
- there is no person with parental responsibility for the child (section 20(1)(a));
- the child is lost or has been abandoned (section 20(1)(b));
- the person who has been caring for the child is prevented (whether or not permanently, and for whatever reason) from providing them with suitable accommodation or care (section 20(1)(c));
- the child has turned 16 and the local authority considers that their welfare is likely to be seriously prejudiced if they are not provided with accommodation (section 20(3)).
The guidance says this is not always easy to determine whether the child should become looked after or, instead, have their needs met by the local authority providing support under section 17 of the 1989 act.
It advises that, where the local authority played a major role in making the kinship care arrangements, they are “likely using their powers to provide accommodation, so the child will be deemed to be looked after”.
Practice point
When it comes to informal arrangements, there is no duty on the local authority to provide the child or kinship carer with any specific support, save for the general duties that all local authorities in England have under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to safeguard and promote the welfare of ‘children in need’ in their area.
Children’s services might become involved only when there are safeguarding concerns that cannot be managed adequately and/or during (and possibly following) a court order application.
If you have a Community Care Inform Children licence, log on to access the full guide and learn more about kinship care.
What to read next
References
Aziz R, Roth D and Lindley B (2012)
Understanding Family and Friends Care: The Largest UK Survey
London: Family Rights Group
Department for Education (2024)
Children Act 1989: Court orders
London: HMSO
Department for Education (2024)
Kinship care: statutory guidance for local authorities
London: HMSO
DJ v Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council & Anor [2024]
EWCA Civ 841: Lady Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill (Lady Chief Justice), Lord Justice Bean and Lord Justice Baker
Ed Mitchell (2010)
Children Act 1989
Community Care Inform [online]
Ofsted (2024)
Fostering in England 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024
London: Ofsted
Samuel, M (2025)
Children’s social care reform. Practice Guidance.
Community Care Inform [online]
Tim Spencer-Lane (2024)
Local authority liability for kinship care foster carers: DJ v Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council & Anor [2024] EWCA Civ 841
Community Care Inform [online]
