Special Guardianship Orders

(asked on 27th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many special guardianship orders have been granted in each year since their inception.


Answered by
Edward Timpson Portrait
Edward Timpson
This question was answered on 2nd December 2014

The Department for Education collect annual figures from local authorities of the number of children who leave care under a Special Guardianship Order. Special Guardianship was introduced as a new permanence option for children that offered greater security than foster care, but without the absolute legal severance from their birth family. Overall, it is good news that thousands of additional children are now living in a permanent family as a result of more SGOs being used.

The table below shows these figures since 2007 when SGOs first started to be made.

Year

Looked After Children who

leave care under an SGO***

Overall number of children

who have an SGO[1]

2007

750

-

2008

1,130

-

2009

1,240

-

2010

1,280

-

2011

1,780

2,980

2012

2,150

4,074

2013

2,770

4,911

2014

3,330

-

***NB – rounded to the nearest 10

The Department for Education Statistical First Release on ‘Children looked after in England, including adoption’ contains data for the last 5 years. Figures quoted cover financial years 1st April – 31st March [2].

[1] The Ministry of Justice collect information of all children with a Special Guardianship Order, only figures for the last 3 years are available. Figures quoted cover calendar years – 1st January – 31st December.

[2] www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption--2

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