Kinship Local Offer

Adoption: A formal legal process in which all the rights and responsibilities relating to a child are transferred to the adoptive parents.  

Adoption Order: A Court Order made as part of the adoption process. All parental rights and responsibilities for a child are permanently transferred to the adoptive parent.  

Child Arrangement Order (CAO): Specifying with whom a child will live and usually lasts until the child is 18. Parental responsibility is shared with the parents. Carers can apply after caring for the child for one year.   

Close relative: Grandparent, brother, sister, uncle, aunt or step-parent by marriage or civil partnership. 

Concerns about a child: If you have any concerns about a child, including a kinship child, contact our Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) team. You do not need to be related to the child or the child’s carer. 

Connected person: Include relatives, friends, and other persons connected to the child.

Designated Teacher: A senior member of a school who champions the educational needs of children in care and children who were previously in care. 

Fair Access Protocol: Ensures that, outside the normal admissions round, unplaced children, especially the most vulnerable, are offered a place at a suitable education provision as quickly as possible. 

Family Group Conference (FGC): A decision-making meeting in which a child’s wider family network come together to make a plan about the future arrangements for the child. 

Family and friends care: Also known as kinship care - is one in which a child who cannot be cared for by their parent(s) or another person with parental responsibility goes to live with a relative, friend, or other connected person. 

Formal kinship care: When a family friend or relative applies and is assessed and approved as a foster carer.  In this formal arrangement, the local authority can ask the family member or friend to care for the child, or the carer can request to be assessed themselves. 

Informal kinship care: When a child lives with relatives or close family friends without the involvement of social services. This is usually a temporary and short-term arrangement, and although day-to-day care is not given by the child's parents, they are still legally responsible for their child. 

Kinship care: Also known as family and friends care - child who was in care with a local authority but is no longer in care. The arrangement can be private between the parent(s) and the relative, friend, or connected person, or it can arise as a result of social services involvement. 

Looked After Child Also known as  ‘in care’ or ‘cared for child’ : A Court has made an Interim or Full Care Order, or an Emergency Protection Order on the child which gives the Local Authority/Council the power to remove the child from the care of their parents. 

The child is ‘in care’, ‘looked after’, or ‘accommodated’ by the local authority.  

Parental responsibility: The legal right to make decisions about a child’s care and how they are raised.        

Previously looked after: A child who was in the care of a local authority but is no longer in care.  This can happen if they are adopted, made subject to a Special Guardianship Order, or made subject to a Child Arrangements Order. 

Private fostering: An arrangement where a child under 16 (or 18 if the child has a disability), is cared for by an adult who is not a parent or close relative, where the child is to be cared for in that arrangement for 28 days or more. 

Special Guardianship Order (SGO): Like a Child Arrangements Order (COA) specifying with whom the child will live, this Court Order states where a child should live and gives the carer parental responsibility. A Special Guardianship Order gives the carer more authority to make decisions than a Child Arrangements Order

Virtual Head Teacher: A senior member of education staff in a local authority who works at a strategic level, but not in a physical school building, to offer an additional layer of support to all kinship children