Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children who are cared for by people who are not their parents (a) live with an approved family foster carer and (b) are looked-after children.

Legislation is clear that, where a looked after child cannot be brought up by a person who has parental responsibility for them then, wherever possible, the child should be brought up by a family member. For children who are looked after, the local authority must therefore ‘give preference to’ a placement with a connected person (i.e. a relative, friend or other person connected with the child) where this is in a child’s best interests. Such arrangements are sometimes referred to as ‘family and friends foster care’ or ‘kinship foster care’. Where a child is looked after, the carer must be an approved foster carer irrespective of their relationship with a child; so all such arrangements fall within the number requested at (a). There are 7,300 looked-after children who are placed with a relative, friend or other connected person who are approved as their foster carers.

In respect of (b) the number of looked-after children excluding those who are placed with parents is 65,630. This data is published in Table A3 of the ‘Children looked after including adoption’ Statistical First Release: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption--2

The Department for Education does not collect information on the number of children who are not looked after but who are cared for by people who are not their parents.