Rapid Evidence Review on Special Guardianship

New evidence review of special guardianship

New evidence review of special guardianship published today calls for reform of special guardianship to protect and support children and their carers. It was commissioned by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory in response to the Court of Appeal’s call for authoritative, evidence-based guidance for the use of SGOs. The review was led by Dr John Simmonds from CoramBAAF and Professor Judith Harwin from Lancaster University. This project was prompted by the judgment of Re P-S handed down by the Court of Appeal in 2018[1].

The review is in four parts:

Special guardianship: a review of the evidence provides an overview and distils the evidence from the three other papers.

Special guardianship: practitioner perspectives presents findings from focus groups held with family justice practitioners. 

Special guardianship: a review of the English research studies draws together the English evidence and identifies some gaps in our knowledge. 

Special guardianship: international research on kinship care summarises key learning from the international literature on kinship care, so that it can be applied by social care and family justice professionals in England and Wales.

[1] Re P-S (Children) [2018] EWCA Civ 1407