Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Special Guardianship Orders have been (a) initiated and (b) terminated in each of the last ten years; and how many and what proportion of children subject to those Special Guardianship Orders have been placed with grandparents.
Figures on the number of looked-after children who were made the subject of a Special Guardianship order during the year in each of the last 5 years are published in Tables D1 and E5 of the statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2017 to 2018’ at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2017-to-2018. Figures for earlier years are published in table D1 in previous releases Statistics: looked-after children - GOV.UK. Regarding details on whether the guardians are grandparents, this information is not held centrally.
Regarding details on whether a special guardianship is terminated, this information is not held centrally and is not collected. Figures on the number of children starting to be looked-after, having previously been the subject of a special guardianship order, are published in Table C1 of the statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2017 to 2018’ at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2017-to-2018, These figures have only been collected since 2014-15 and caution should be used when interpreting this data as there is a high proportion of unknowns.