What do we know about Special Guardianship and what do we need to know?

Professor Judith Harwin (Director, Centre for Child and Youth research, Brunel University London) presents preliminary findings from a national study of special guardianship orders (SGOs) and supervision orders (SOs) funded by the Nuffield Foundation (2015-2017).

Key points discussed

  • the use of SGOs and compared their ratio of use to placement, care, supervision and residence orders
  • the extent to which SGOs are accompanied by SOs
  • the time taken to complete proceedings

The emerging findings presented at Coram’s Permanence seminar (October) have been updated and now include 2014/15 legal order data. The updated report (Briefing Paper No.1) can be found on the Nuffield website here.