Keeping the Promise - health and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people: longitudinal quantitative evidence review

Annex 2 – Placement type definitions (source: Children’s Social Work Statistics: Looked After Children 2023/24)

Community setting placements

At home with parents

A child becomes looked after at home when the Children's Hearings system imposes a Supervision Requirement with no condition of residence. A child looked after at home continues to live at their normal residence (usually the family home) but receives regular visits from social workers to ensure that the objectives of the home Supervision Order are being met. There are two main instances in which this happens:

• as a starting point for planned intervention, where the balance of risk indicates that it is not essential to remove the child from the care of their parents, but that the situation must be monitored;
• where children are returning home after being looked after away from home, where some risks still remain and home supervision aims to help reunite the family.

Kinship care

Kinship care is when a child is looked after by their extended family or close friends if they cannot remain with their birth parents. Under the Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009, a kinship carer is defined as "a person who is related to the child (through blood, marriage or civil partnership) or a person with whom the child has a pre-existing relationship". Kinship care includes both (1) looked after children who have been placed with kinship carers by the local authority; and (2) non-looked after children who live in an informal kinship care arrangement (these children may be subject to an order under Section 11 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or may be living in a completely private arrangement with extended family, with no local authority involvement).

A Kinship Care Order is a court order that confers all or part of parental responsibilities and rights to a friend or relative of the child and can be a trigger for receipt of kinship care assistance. In such circumstances, the child would no longer be looked after.

Foster care

When a child cannot be cared for by their birth parents, or by kinship carers they can be cared for by an approved foster family. Any adult can apply to become a foster carer by sending an application to their local authority or to a voluntary or independent provider registered with the Care Inspectorate. Foster care can be a temporary arrangement that can end when a child returns to their birth parents, or is adopted. Other placements can be long term if this is in the best interests of the child. Foster cares can be (1) provided by local authority, or (2) purchased by a local authority.

With prospective adopters

This refers to children living with their prospective adopters, during the formal legal process in which all the rights and responsibilities relating to a child are transferred to the adoptive parents.

In other community

This could be any other placement in the community, such as for example, supported accommodation.

Residential care placements

Placements in residential accommodation settings offer children, usually of secondary school age, a safe place to live together with other children away from home. They provide accommodation, support and, in some cases, education. Residential care settings include local authority and voluntary homes/hostels, residential schools, secure care accommodation, crisis care and other types of residential settings.