Care Orders or Kinship Care?

Stuart Graham made this Freedom of Information request to Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board
This authority is not subject to FOI law, so is not legally obliged to respond (details).
This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

Response to this request is long overdue. Although not legally required to do so, we would have expected Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board to have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Herefordshire Council,

The Local Family Justice Council Newsletter Issue 4 – December
2009, refers to:

"New guidance to local authorities, published in conjunction with the Public Law Outline, states that before the local authority reaches a decision that it should apply for a Care Order, it should explore whether alternative care can be provided safely for the child by a relative or friend (para 3.24); and

• The Children and Young Person’s Act 2008 includes new provisions which:
􀂾 require local authorities to consider relatives who are approved as local authority foster carers as the first choice of placement for children in the care system who cannot return home to live with their parents...."

1. Please provide a full account of your guidance to your local authority social services in respect of child placements in arrangements known as “Family and friends care” or “kinship care” or “relative and friends care."

2. Is it the policy of Herefordshire Council to obtain care orders for children when alternative placements are available with relatives the Council has already considered as safe?

3. Would the benefit of keeping children at a local school be elevated above the interests and needs of the children to remain with safe relatives who live 100 miles away in order that children could be fostered locally and permanently removed from other safe parents and extended relatives?

4. When investigations conclude that a mother is unable or unfit to care for her children, but no such evidence exists about the father, would council policy place the children with the father?

5. If the father, at the time of the mother being considered unable to care for the children, left the mother but did not have immediate suitable accommodation for the children, but was, for instance, a skilled, self employed tradesman needing only interim assistance, would it be the policy of the council to assist in order to effect his obtaining residence of the children?

6. In the absence of such assistance, would the council's policy to be to advise the father to obtain suitable accommodation and state a realistic timeframe?

7. If children are placed with a safe out of area relative once the mother is considered unsafe, what process must be followed if Herefordshire Council wishes to remove the children back into its jurisdiction?

Yours faithfully,

S. Graham

Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board

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