Data and research

Current action

In September 2023, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its analysis of kinship households from the Census 2021. This finds that there likely more than 130,000 children living in kinship care across England, although there are significant limitations to the use of the Census questions to determine this. For more information, please see our full response to the new ONS data release.

We know there is significant variation in the geography and profile of kinship carers and their children. For example, research shows that children from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds are significantly underrepresented in kinship foster care and kinship special guardianship. Kinship is leading a research project alongside the Rees Centre to understand more about the specific experiences and needs of Black and Asian kinship families.

Alongside the Children’s Social Care National Framework, the Department for Education is also working to produce a Children’s Social Care Dashboard. This intends to be a routine data publication based on a set of Dashboard Indicators which aim to help identify trends across local authorities and monitor progress towards each outcome. The shortlisted Indicator published in December 2023 for Outcome 2 of the National Framework is ‘Percentage of children who cease being looked after due to moving into Special Guardianship Order (SGO), or Care Arrangement Order (CAO)’, but this may change as the Department’s work on this continues. Roll out of the Dashboard will be phased with an iterative approach based on learning from 2024.

Other forthcoming research highlighted within the National Kinship Care Strategy includes a Departmental commission involving Ecorys UK, the Rees Centre and Ipsos to deliver a longitudinal study tracking the needs, experiences and outcomes of children leaving care to special guardianship (and adoption), as well as a systematic review, led by Foundations, identifying interventions for kinship families that improve outcomes for children. Previously, What Works for Children’s Social Care (now Foundations) carried out a feasibility study for delivering a randomised control trial of our Kinship Connected programme, which has also had its own external evaluation.

Our verdict

There is no available data that gives us an accurate and robust understanding of kinship families across the country. This is in stark contrast to other areas of children’s social care, such as fostering and adoption, and maintains kinship families’ invisibility to policymakers.

Statutory data collection (in particular the SSDA903 returns made by local authorities to the Department for Education) tell us how many children are in kinship (i.e. family and friends) foster care and how many children leave care to special guardianship or child arrangements orders each year. We also have regualarly published family court statistics from the Ministry of Justice. Other figures on kinship cohorts has been obtained recently via written questions in Parliament, including local authority-level figures of children in kinship foster care and School Census data revealing the number of children previously looked after who are subject to a special guardianship or child arrangements order (where known). The Department for Education has also made an assessment of the number of children cared for under a special guardianship or child arrangements order made in private law proceedings to support the recent Virtual School extension. Overall, the data picture for kinship care is patchy, incomplete and pieced together through various different datasets and methodologies which don’t deliver a robust understanding of the cohort(s).

As such, the data linking project between the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education is very welcome and something we have called for consistently to provide a comprehensive picture of at least formalised kinship care arrangements.

The Children’s Social Care Dashboard and Dashboard Indicators, if realised well, could enable kinship carers and others to understand more about local authority variation in kinship care outcomes and practice. However, as noted above (see ‘Building a new kinship care system’), these Indicators must not prematurely push the system towards increasing the number and/or proportion of all children unable to live with their parents into kinship care before accompanying reforms to financial and other support for all kinship carers have been introduced. To do so would be dangerous and not in children’s best interests, and risks undermining welcome new efforts to improve support for families.

What should happen next

The Department for Education should work closely with Kinship (including our researchers network) and other expert sector organisations such as Foundations and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory to identify gaps in research, evidence, and statutory and wider data collection and publication, and the next Government should then confirm further plans to improve this. A collaborative and comprehensive approach is needed to ensure research and data resource is focused strategically on what is most needed to improve our understanding of kinship families.

The data linking project between the Department for Education and Ministry of Justice should extend not only to the SSDA903 returns from local authorities but too other sources of data held by the Department for Education, such as the National Pupil Database. This will help provide a rounded picture of how different kinship care cohorts are faring in education too. The Department should also consider utilising other means of data collection available within its own work (e.g. the School Census) and that of other governmental departments to build an improved picture of kinship families and help improve policymaking and services targeted towards them.