Local authority practice

What’s happening now?

Local authorities are continuing to consider their practice and support following the publication of new kinship care statutory guidance during Kinship Care Week in October 2024. Although the government is clear that this “does not place any new statutory requirements on local authorities” and only “repositions previous guidance into a clear framework supported by updated factual information and legal guidance”, it:

• confirms that local authorities should support kinship foster carers if necessary to attain the National Minimum Standards and consider their situations differently to mainstream foster carers; and
• introduces the ‘kinship local offer’ to replace the local family and friends care policy requirement (see ‘Information, training and support for kinship carers’ for more on the kinship local offer and the inclusion of a new legal duty in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill).

Jahnine Davis was appointed by the Department for Education as the National Kinship Care Ambassador October 2024. The role “advocates for kinship children and carers across government and works directly with local authorities to improve services”.

Foundations – the national What Works Centre for Children & Families – published in October 2024 a Kinship Care Practice Guide to “support senior leaders and commissioners in local areas to commission and develop effective services to support kinship families.” This followed a commitment outlined by the then government in Stable Homes, Built on Love to produce Practice Guides which set out the best evidenced approaches for achieving the outcomes set within the Children’s Social Care National Framework.

What’s happened before?

The National Kinship Care Strategy noted that Ofsted inspectors would receive additional bespoke training around kinship care, and confirmed that Ofsted would review published guidance to ensure references to kinship care are clear and that local authorities’ strengths and weaknesses in kinship care practice are captured in their inspection reports. Since then, some very minor changes have been made to Ofsted’s inspection guidance to include reference to “kinship” or “kinship care” where this wasn’t present before.

The National Kinship Care Strategy also noted that ongoing work to introduce a new Early Career Framework (ECF) for social workers would set out the skills and knowledge needed to support kinship families well, and that practitioners will be supported to share best practice around kinship care through events and forums, including in areas such as carer identification and assessment. Since then, plans for a five-year ECF have been dropped and the current government instead launched a consultation in March 2025 on a two-year social work induction programme (SWIP) and new post-qualifying standards (PQS).

Our verdict

New statutory guidance is welcome; previous guidance was outdated and failed to capture the current policy context and focus on kinship care. In particular, we’re pleased to see a reaffirmed requirement for local authorities to provide visible, accessible and up-to-date information to kinship carers (see ‘Information, training and support for kinship carers’ for more).

Adapting practice around the application of the fostering National Minimum Standards for kinship foster carers is also broadly welcome; if children can’t live with their parents and enter the care system, it’s right that we prioritise kinship care options with relatives and friends when in their best interests, and practice should recognise the different needs, strengths and circumstances between kinship and mainstream fostering. However, existing legislation and guidance is clear that placement decisions must ‘give preference to’ those connected to the child, and application of the Standards shouldn’t derail nor were they designed to supersede that placement principle. Given our evidence which reveals how progression to kinship arrangements outside of the care system has stalled despite already growing numbers of children in kinship foster care, it is important that the government gets the sequencing of policy reform right; that means ensuring support is there for kinship families before incentivising placing more children in kinship foster care arrangements and a system which isn’t designed for their unique circumstances (see ‘Building a new kinship care system‘).

We welcomed the appointment of Jahnine Davis as National Kinship Care Ambassador who brings a wealth of valuable lived and professional experience, and we are glad to have welcomed Jahnine to meet with Kinship peer support groups and young people raised in kinship care since her appointment. The Ambassador role should help to improve local authority information and support and ensure that kinship carers are involved in helping to shape the services they and their children receive. However, unlike other areas of children’s social care, practice in kinship care is less well developed and approaches can vary considerably between – and even within – different local authorities. This will present ongoing challenges for the role, especially given the current workforce and financial pressures facing local authorities which makes embedding new ways of working more difficult.

Foundations’ Kinship Care Practice Guide is an important step forward in identifying and recognising best practice in supporting kinship families at a time when kinship care awareness and recognition amongst professionals is growing. Its recommendations echo many of those we continue to advocate for local authorities to consider, including specialist support to help kinship carers navigate to and access support (reflected in our own support services for kinship carers), and the use of financial allowances to increase placement permanency and reduce disruption.

Further Ofsted activity to both support and challenge local authority practice in kinship care has been minimal. As such, its framework for inspecting local authority children’s services is increasingly misaligned with the focus placed on kinship care within the National Children’s Social Care Framework, the Department for Education’s vision for the children’s social care system, and the government’s ongoing programme of reform. Additional consideration must be given to how Ofsted can best scrutinise and investigate local authorities’ practice around kinship care more effectively given its role as a lever for driving strategic change and practice improvement within children’s services.

What should happen next?

Local authorities should work alongside their kinship carers and local peer support groups to build a strong kinship local offer and inform their own practice with kinship families; the National Kinship Care Ambassador should be a key enabler of this. The role should have a strong focus on ensuring all local authorities deliver the essentials well, with priorities aligned to key objectives with the National Kinship Care Strategy and the National Children’s Social Care Framework. In particular, the Ambassador should help local authorities to ensure they provide up-to-date and visible information for all types of kinship carer about the support available to them, as part of the new kinship local offer requirement in statutory guidance. 

We want to see Ofsted significantly enhance the attention paid to kinship care practice and support within its inspections and undertake a thematic review of its inspection reports to support this work, and will continue to encourage Ofsted to consider establishing a separate judgement for kinship care within its inspection framework for local authority children’s services, similar to the recent (re)introduction of this for care leavers. This would better align the inspection framework with the new National Framework, giving sufficient weight to considerations around kinship care and supporting family networks.

Further practice guidance around kinship care should be built on existing research and evidence in supporting kinship carers, including ‘Key elements of a special guardianship support service’ and ‘Developing good practice in financially supporting special guardians’. It should also address some of the challenges highlighted by specialist social workers who practice in kinship care given its unique mix of skills and knowledge which draw from elements of both child protection and mainstream fostering practice. Where these do not exist already, local authorities should consider establishing specialist kinship teams with the breadth of skills necessary to deliver high-quality social work support; this should be encouraged by the government and the National Kinship Care Ambassador. Many local authorities have already developed specialist teams who are delivering pioneering support for kinship carers, and Kinship offers a network which brings together professionals working in kinship care to share good practice and learn from each other.

The government must also ensure local authorities have the core, long-term funding they need to deliver reform and pioneer new ways of working with kinship families; current workforce and financial pressures make the recalibration of services, practice and culture all the more difficult. Indeed, the Department for Education itself identifies that local authority financial challenges is a critical risk to the delivery of essential support services and reforms across children’s social care.