This rapid evidence review is intended to contribute to the drafting of authoritative guidance to assist courts in the UK in making Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) and to help inform decision-making by frontline practitioners.

This review examines the legislative history leading up to extended care, the research on youth leaving foster care, youth preferences for extended care, the competition of extended care with permanency options, and the effects of extended foster care on transition-age youth.

This report presents the findings from strand one of the Permanently Progressing? study, Pathways to Permanence for children who become looked after in Scotland. This strand analysed data from the Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS) provided to the Scottish Government by all 32 local authorities on the total cohort of children who became looked after during the year 1 August 2012 - 31 July 2013 when they were aged five and under

The aim of this particular strand of the Permanently Progressing? study was to investigate the experiences, pathways, and outcomes of children who became looked after away from home, together with the factors associated with achieving permanence.

The Decision making for children report is one strand of the Permanently Progressing? study. In this strand, during 2015-17, 160 decision makers were interviewed across Scotland mainly in groups, but some individually.

There is little Australian research on the factors that influence decisions to adopt children from out‐of‐home care. This paper presents a mixed methods study that was conducted to address this gap.

The objectives of this study were: (a) to measure the time-to-initial placement change in different types of settings, including non-relative foster homes, kinship care, residential treatment centers (RTC), group homes and other types of settings; and (b) to identify predictors of the initial placement change.

The Care Pathways and Outcomes Study is a longitudinal study following 374 children who were in care and under five years old on 31/3/2000 in Northern Ireland. The study followed where the young people ended up living, whether they returned to their birth parents, went into kinship or non-relative foster care, or were adopted.

For this evaluation, the authors asked whether the rate of exit to permanency increased for children whose time in foster care in New York City coincided with when private foster care agencies reached the new reduced caseload target.

This bulletin provides information for child welfare professionals about the importance of permanency for youth and strategies for achieving it. Permanency efforts for youth should include both legal permanency (e.g., reunification, adoption, kinship care) and relational permanency (i.e., a relationship or connection with a caring adult, such as a relative, neighbor, service provider, teacher, or other important person in the youth's life). These adults may provide lifelong support that can help youth transition to adulthood and may even become a legal permanent option for the youth.