Carers

(asked on 19th September 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education of 14 September 2023 on Kinship Care, Offical Report, Column 408WH, if she will publish the methodology used to estimate the number of children in kinship in the 2021 census.


Answered by
David Johnston Portrait
David Johnston
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This question was answered on 17th October 2023

On 14 September, the department agreed to share the latest data on the number of children in kinship care according to the Office for National Statistic’s (ONS) 2021 census. The kinship care data from the 2021 census can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/adhocs/1345ct210105census2021. The kinship care data from the 2011 census is available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/adhocs/1344ct1286census2011

The ONS published an article on 26 September 2023 which describes how the figures have been derived from the 2021 census, available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/articles/kinshipcareinenglandandwales/census2021. The description of how the figures have been derived also appears in the notes of the tables the ONS has already published. Caution is needed when inferring any trends from these data sets as the Census figures for 2021 are of higher quality than the 2011 Census figures. The quality note on ‘Comparing Census 2021 household relationships with 2011 Census’ can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/methodologies/demographyandmigrationqualityinformationforcensus2021

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