Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been placed under special guardianship orders; and how many of those orders have been disrupted in each year since 2012-13.

The number of looked-after children who were adopted is published in table E1 and the number who were the subject of a special guardianship order is published in table E5 for the last 5 years in the statistical release ‘Children looked-after in England (including adoption) year ending 31 March 2018 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2017-to-2018.

The department does not collect information on adoptions and special guardianship orders that were disrupted. National figures on numbers of children who started to be looked-after who had a previous permanence arrangement, including special guardianship orders and adoption orders, are available in table C1 in the above release. However, these figures were collected for the first time in 2014 and should be treated with caution as the information is based on self-declaration and for a number of children the previous permanence arrangement is not known.