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Eurochild has published two new pieces of analysis to support efforts by the EU and the Ukrainian government to ensure the care of children arriving from Ukraine unaccompanied, separated from their families or who are placed in alternative care.
Building on Eurochild’s DataCare project with UNICEF ECARO, Eurochild is supporting UNICEF’s emergency response work to the invasion of Ukraine to support coordination efforts with the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy, the EU and Member…
Abstract
Growing numbers of grandparent special guardians (GSGs) are assuming responsibility for increasing numbers of children in the care system in England. Special guardianship arrangements are increasingly used as a permanency option as they allow children to remain in their kinship networks rather than in local authority care or be adopted; yet there is a scarcity of research on GSG carers' experiences. This paper reports a small qualitative research study where 10 sets of grandparents were interviewed to explore their journey to becoming GSGs and to theorize their subsequent…
Abstract
Purpose
Special guardianship order (SGO) assessments require social workers to make plans and recommendations for ongoing post-SGO contact between the child and the parents. However, there is very little policy to inform and guide practitioners on how these duties should be undertaken, and no studies that describe current practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the recommending of contact in special guardianship cases is currently working, by holding focus groups with social workers and special guardians. This paper reports on the results of a study to examine…
Abstract
Purpose
An integral feature of Special Guardianship Orders (SGO) is that the children should have some contact with their parents after the order is granted. Local authority social workers have a duty to plan and recommend levels and types of contact. But there is no policy guidance provided on how to undertake these duties, and little is known about the process that practitioners undertake. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the recommending of contact in special guardianship cases, and to provide data on what contact social workers are recommending the factors they…
Overview
A Special Guardianship Order (SGO) gives one or more individuals, usually family members, parental responsibility for a child who cannot live with their birth parents. Although the making of an SGO enables the person who holds the Order to exercise that responsibility ‘to the exclusion of all others’, the basic legal link between the child and their birth parents is preserved.
In the development of the policy framework for SGOs, there was a strong focus on people who were already caring for children – family members or foster carers in particular. However, they are now most…
1.1 Introduction and background
This report is about the use of ‘family orders’ to support family reunification and placement with family and friends as outcomes of S31 care and supervision proceedings brought under the Children Act 1989. These proceedings are brought by local authorities for children who they believe have experienced or are likely to experience ‘significant harm’ as a result of the parenting they have received falling below a reasonable standard. They are amongst the most vulnerable children in society who have met the highest threshold of concern and their futures cannot…
In 2015/16, over 3,600 special guardianship orders were made in relation to children in the care system, while nearly a fifth of foster placements were with family and friends carers. Undertaking a connected person / family and friends assessment is designed to help social workers to manage and complete a comprehensive and evidence-based assessment of connected people / family and friends who wish to foster or be special guardians to a known child or children. It is to be used by assessing social workers to complete this assessment using the CoramBAAF Form C for England, published in 2017…
Abstract
This paper draws on research into the role of Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) in England, exploring the dimensions and challenges of their ‘independence’. IROs are specialist social workers whose function is to review the cases of children in public care and ensure that they have appropriate plans and that these plans are being implemented in a timely manner. IROs are ‘independent’ in the sense that they are not the social worker to whom a child's case is allocated, and do not have line management responsibility for the case, however they are employed by the same local…
In this episode of “File on 4” from BBC Radio, Jane Deith investigates the practice of “Special Guardianship” orders in the UK, orders that grant legal guardianship of children to grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, or others who come forward to care for children when their parents can’t. Deith interviews people who have become special guardians for children and uncovers a general lack of support for these guardians who find themselves overwhelmed by the needs of children who have experienced trauma. “[The children] needed specialist help that it wasn’t possible to give,” said…
Abstract
Across the English-speaking world, child protection authorities are increasingly placing children with extended family rather than in foster care or residential care. Many more children are in such arrangements informally. A number of surveys of kinship carers have been conducted in recent years in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This paper systematically reviews these surveys to identify messages for policy and practice about the characteristics and support needs of kinship care families. Some comparisons are made with population studies of kinship…