Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many of the looked after children who were cared for in a friends and family foster placement were placed there under a section 20 of the Children Act 1989 voluntary agreement (a) as at 31 March 2016 and (b) for each of the last 10 years.

The number of children who were cared for in a friends and family foster placement in England at 31 March, and were looked after under a section 20 of the Children Act 1989 voluntary agreement, is shown in the table below^1,2.

Source: SSDA903

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10.
2. Numbers reflect the legal status of the child at 31 March, although in majority of these cases, the legal status was unchanged from the start of the friends and family foster placement.