Data Insight: Growing up in kinship care

This Data Insight by Dr Joanna Soraghan and Dr Robert Porter explores the experiences of children and young people in Scotland who have spent time living with a family member or family friend while in care – known as ‘kinship care’. The Growing Up in Kinship Care study makes use of the Scottish Government’s Longitudinal Looked After Children dataset.

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What we found

Variation across Scotland

We found that there were differences across Scotland’s local authorities in terms of how likely a ‘looked after’ child was to be living in kinship care. This ranged from less than 20% of children in care in North Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire and Highland, to over 50% in both Glasgow and Stirling. We found evidence of a moderate relationship between deprivation and the likelihood of a child in care living with kinship carers, with higher proportions of children living with family members and friends in more deprived areas.

Legal basis for children and young people living in kinship care

When children come into care in Scotland, there must be legal basis in place for this. These bases include a range of compulsory orders, such as a Compulsory Supervision Order, or a Child Protection Order, as well as Section 25 arrangements, which are sometimes known as ‘voluntary’ care arrangements. Our analysis found that it has become more common over the period studied for children to be cared for in kinship care under Section 25 arrangements. As a proportion this has more than doubled between 2009 and 2019, going from 19% of kinship care placements to 40%. We also found that Section 25 arrangements are more commonly used for children living in kinship care than they are for other types of care placements.

Of those who came into care under Section 25 arrangements and lived directly with kinship carers (n=5185), 76% remained living under these arrangements throughout their time in kinship care.

Types of care settings experienced

Of the approximately 19,000 children who had experienced kinship care at any point, it was most common for children and young people to have only experienced kinship care (40%), with a combination of kinship care and time spent ‘looked after at home’ with their parents being the next most common combination (23%). This means that only around 1 in 3 children (37%) who lived in kinship care also spent time in a care environment where people outside of their family network were providing their care.

Our analysis also found that 2 in 3 children (66%) who experienced kinship care had moved directly into kinship care at the point at which they became ‘looked after‘.

Length of time spent in kinship care

The average length of kinship placement was around 1 year and 4 months but there was great variation within this. Children who had come into kinship care under a Compulsory Supervision Order tended to experience longer placements than those coming into care under Section 25 arrangements, and there were significant differences in average placement length seen across Scotland’s local authorities. We found that kinship care can be used as either a short-term or long-term solution to provide for the needs of children and families. Around 1 in 10 placements (9%) lasted less than one month, while 1 in every 6 placements (16%) lasted for more than 5 years.

Leaving kinship care

Looking across the period from 2008 to 2019, there were approximately 21,500 completed kinship placements. In 48% of these placements the child left care directly after living with kinship carers. In the other 52%, the child moved to another care environment and remained ‘looked after’ by the local authority. We found that, after leaving kinship care, most children either lived with family members or friends, or returned to live with their birth parent(s). This was true both when a kinship care arrangement ended due to the child leaving care, or when it ended due to them moving to a new care environment.

Why it matters

The findings presented here provide new insights into the experiences of children and young people who have spent time living with kinship carers while ‘looked after’ in Scotland. We found that kinship options for a child tend to be explored early on in their time in care. We also found that most ‘looked after’ children who spend time in kinship care are only cared for within their wider family and friend network, with only 37% of the children in our sample having experienced care away from home with carers who were previously unknown to them. In addition, the analysis has shown that most children and young people continued to live with family members, friends or birth parents after their experience of kinship care.

The research also evidenced a high degree of regional variation in children’s experiences of kinship care across Scotland. It is important that this variation is further explored to ensure that kinship families are supported appropriately no matter where they live.