By Ann Horne, kinship care consultant, CoramBAAF

There are an estimated 132,800 children living in kinship care in England (Kinship and Centre for Care, 2025).

In many such cases, family members step in to care for a child without the involvement of social workers.

However, a growing proportion of children in care – 16% in 2024, up from 13% in 2018 – are living with kinship foster carers and almost 4,000 children left care on special guardianship orders in each of the past six years, more than the numbers adopted.

When the local authority takes a child into care, it has a duty to consider whether a relative, friend or connected person can look after the child and then assess their suitability, before considering a placement in unrelated foster care (section 22C, Children Act 1989).

CoramBAAF believes children should be supported to live within their family network when it is safe to do so, and receive the support needed to thrive.

A new kinship care assessment

We have recently completed a two-year project to comprehensively review and update our assessment form for prospective kinship carers.

Previously called Form C (assessment of connected persons and family and friends), the name change to Form K was simple to do but reflects the complex policy and reform agenda and current language used.

Published in 2025, the new Kinship Care Assessment (Form K) enables robust and comprehensive assessment to inform decision making about a child’s future.

Reflecting the unique context of kinship care

We consulted with kinship carers to inform the design and development of Form K, and kinship carers were part of the project working party.

We know kinship carers often experience the assessment process as intrusive, and in our focus groups they told us they felt misunderstood and mistrusted. Some also told us though how they valued their relationship with their social worker, who had supported them through the bewildering process of becoming a kinship carer, often with little planning and preparation, as the child needed care at a time of family crisis.

Unlike foster carers or adopters, who often have months or years to make the life-changing decision to care for or adopt a child, many kinship carers are propelled into a system of fostering regulations and statutory guidance not designed for them, at a time of uncertainty, stress and anxiety.

The updated assessment form reflects the unique context of a kinship care assessment and we hope this will support practitioners to improve the assessment experience for kinship carers.

Amplifying the voice of the child

We know kinship care is a positive experience for many children as they often already know, love and trust their prospective carer.

It is essential therefore that the child’s voice is amplified and their wishes and feelings are central to the assessment of their prospective carer. Form K puts the voice of the child at the very start of the assessment, and requires the social worker to articulate the meaning of their relationship with their prospective kinship carer, to ensure this is a golden thread that runs throughout the assessment.

How is Form K different?

Form K encourages analysis of strengths and vulnerabilities, but crucially also asks what support might be needed for the child and prospective kinship carer to mitigate any assessed risks and vulnerabilities and includes an integral support plan.

It encourages relevant and proportionate assessment, and focuses on the analysis that will inform decision making.

Tested in practice and improved

From June to October 2024, we piloted Form K in ten local authorities, and sought feedback from social workers, managers, agency decision-makers, panel members as well as kinship carers themselves.

The practitioners and managers from the pilot local authorities met with us monthly and their questions and comments were invaluable in shaping the final version.

One agency decision maker described Form K as “succinct, clear, jargon-free and well-organised”. The local authorities told us Cafcass children’s guardians were positive about Form K assessments they had read, saying they were helpful and comprehensive.

A kinship family, who were assessed using Form K after a negative initial assessment that they challenged in court, stated: “We appreciate the time and effort our social worker has taken to get to know our family, and learn and understand our culture and traditions …..this is a big part of us that belongs in the assessment report.”

Form K – a lever for change

The 2023 national kinship care strategy states that assessment should be “reasonable, proportionate and treat family members with trust while prioritising the safety of the child”. Of course, an assessment form is only as good as the social worker completing it, and therefore the form can only be one of the levers needed to influence social work practice with kinship families.

We hope that Form K will enable a relationship-based and reflective assessment process that will support kinship carers at the start of their journey to feel supported and understood, and to receive the support needed for themselves and their child, so that the whole kinship family can thrive.

To find out more about Form K and the work of CoramBAAF please go to the CoramBAAF website.

The social care watchdog is increasingly finding fault with council decision making in relation to social care assessments and care planning.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) upheld 80% of complaints it investigated relating to assessment and care planning in 2023-24, up from 67% in 2022-23 and 64% in 2021-22, according to its annual review of adult care complaints.

Complaints upheld included cases of councils delaying assessments, not making reasonable adjustments during the assessment process, not meeting a person’s eligible needs when they were required to do so, not reviewing care and support plans in a suitably timely fashion and drawing up plans that were insufficiently detailed or specific.

The ombudsman also received significantly more complaints about assessment and care planning in 2023-24 (695) than in 2022-23 (494) and 2021-22 (499).

However, of the 631 cases it decided, it determined that a third were not within its remit and closed 28% of the rest.

Ombudsman ‘unable to draw conclusions’ from complaint trends

Despite the sharp rise in the uphold rate for assessment and care planning cases, the LGSCO said that changes in its approach meant that it could not draw conclusions from the change.

“We have changed some of our internal processes over the last couple of years, prioritising investigation of those cases which have a wider public interest, which has an impact on the data,” said a spokesperson.

“Because of all this, when we look at the data, we would not be confident to draw any particular conclusions on any trends or patterns.

“We have seen a jump in the uphold rate for assessment and care planning, but we cannot be clear on the reason for this at this stage and without a longer term trend.”

Overall findings

Overall, the ombudsman investigated fewer adult social care complaints against councils and providers in 2023-24 (926) than in 2022-23 (1,078), but upheld a greater proportion – 80%, up from 75%.

The LGSCO also upheld an increased percentage, and number, of complaints it investigated regarding charging for care, with 82% (176) of decisions going against councils in 2023-24, up from 79% (151) the year before.

In relation to safeguarding, the uphold rate increased slightly, from 62% to 63%, year on year, but the number of cases investigated fell, from 54 to 34.

Councils and providers urged to improve communication

In her foreword to the annual complaints review, ombudsman Amerdeep Somal said: “Our casework highlights a range of concerns, specifically delays in the assessment of people’s needs, processes that fail to put the individual at the centre, care that fits with the system’s offer rather than the person’s needs and preferences, and poor communication with people who use services and their families, where information is unclear or too complicated.”

She added: “I urge all councils and care providers to focus on clear and timely communication. With effective communication channels, people feel well-informed and involved, and concerns are less likely to turn into complaints.”

Assessments under the Care Act 2014, in England, or Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, aim to enable individuals to express their wishes and preferences regarding their care. Taking a strengths-based approach invites practitioners to put the assessment form away and engage the person in a conversation about more than just the problems they face.

Building a collaborative relationship is key in strengths-based practice. This requires practitioners to step away from holding themselves as the authority and to view the individual being assessed as the expert in their own life and experience.

To keep assessment and eligibility processes strengths-focused, try to:

1. Shift from discussing problems to exploring possibilities and solutions.
2. Reframe a negative experience in a positive light.
3. Encourage the person to take the lead in identifying their needs and desired outcomes.
4. Check and confirm whether the person wants the involvement of the local authority.
5. Prompt the person to ensure all their needs have been identified.
6. Ask about day-to-day outcomes like dressing, maintaining personal relationships, going out into the community and, where relevant, working.
7. Be clear about eligibility requirements. Emphasise the idea that people’s needs are often best met by combining complementary resources.
8. Write any notes or reports and record decisions you make in the knowledge that you are required to share these with the person. Consider what it would be like to read them.
9. Facilitate active involvement in decision making.
10. Use open-ended questions that allow the person to describe their situation without you making assumptions regarding deficits.

While a strengths-based approach is consistent with the outcome-based assessments required under the Care Act and Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act, it does not provide all the answers. It must be used in tandem with critical theories and approaches to build a better understanding of situations, discover ways forward and help other possibilities emerge.

If you have a Community Care Inform Adults licence, log in to access the full guide and read more strengths-based ideas for moving beyond completion of an assessment form as well as suggested questions and strategies for engagement.

Chief social worker for adults Lyn Romeo and principal social workers have issued guidance on carrying out proportionate assessments under the Care Act 2014.

The guide comes in the wake of Department of Health and Social Care funding designed to streamline the assessment process, including through virtual processes, delegating assessments to third parties and making more use of non-qualified staff to help deal with social worker shortages.

The latter point prompted criticism from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England, which warned that it risked diluting the social work role.

The new guide, co-authored by the Adult Principal Social Worker Network, addresses this issue, saying that “ensuring the optimum ratio of qualified staff to other social care staff” carrying out assesssments “will be essential” in responding to people with care and support needs in a timely way.

When social workers should carry out assessments

Social workers should focus on “supporting people with more complex needs and circumstances”, it adds.

However, it stresses that those social work assistants, apprentices or social care assessors carrying out assessments should have “access to supervision from regulated professionals who can ensure assessments are of good quality and comply with the Care Act”.

The guide provides a checklist for councils in managing cases where assessments are delegated to third-party bodies, such as NHS trusts, providers or voluntary sector organisations, as is permitted by section 79 of the Care Act.

This should include clarifying the oversight arrangements for delegated assessments, including “some form of validation by a social worker or occupational therapist and audit arrangements”.

In an introduction to the guide, Romeo said it was designed to help practitioners, councils and NHS trusts “consider the positive lessons” from practising under Covid-19, including through the use of technology, such as video assessments.

Care Act requirements

Regulations under the Care Act 2014 require councils to ensure that an assessment is “appropriate and proportionate to the needs and circumstances of the individual to whom it relates”.

The act’s statutory guidance states this means the assessment can be carried out in a range of formats, depending on the person’s needs or preferences: face-to-face, online, over the phone, jointly with other agencies, in combination with the assessment of a carer or as a supported self-assesssment.

Echoing the statutory guidance, the new guide says face-to-face assessments are “necessary and appropriate if there are complex needs or safeguarding concerns”.

It says virtual assessments may be proportionate “if all of the following conditions apply”:

• the situation is fairly straightforward, with no coercion, neglect or safeguarding concerns;
• there is a stable internet connection and access to technology;
• the person has capacity to engage in the assessment, and their communication skills are good.

In its introduction to the guide, the leadership team of the Adult Principal Social Worker Network said that proportionality “must not be used only as a vehicle to deliver financial efficiencies – it is imperative that the right support is provided at the right time, determined in partnership with the person”.

“Our role is to help people live the lives they want,” it added.

Almost 7,000 people have been waiting more than six months for a social care assessment, as councils face an “avalanche of need”, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has warned.

Though there are no statutory timescales for assessments under the Care Act 2014, waits of this length far exceed the one-month targets set by many councils and the four to six weeks deemed reasonable by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO).

In response to the figures, from ADASS’s spring survey, published this week, an LGSCO spokesperson said that waits of this length would usually constitute a fault by the council in question, though it would depend on the circumstances of the case.

The survey found just under 55,000 people were on waiting lists for assessments with almost 20,000 others waiting for care and support or direct payments to be started. Almost 160,000 people had been waiting over a year for a care and support review, contrary to the expectation set out in the Care Act statutory guidance of a 12-month interval between planned reviews.

‘People will deteriorate’

ADASS warned that waits of this nature were putting older and disabled people at significant risk.

“Whilst social work teams do their best to prioritise based on the information they glean, it is inevitable that many people will deteriorate, become mentally or physically unwell, lose confidence, fall, or that unreported or concealed abuse or neglect will worsen,” said the survey report.

ADASS said the waiting times reflected an “avalanche of need” directors were facing in the wake of Covid-19 and the failure of resources to keep pace with demand. The research found councils were planning to make savings of £601m to manage their finances this year, equivalent to 3.7% of their net budgets.

Just 21% were fully confident they had the budget to fulfil their statutory duties in 2021-22, down from 33% in the equivalent pre-Covid survey in 2019-20, with confidence dropping across a range of areas.

Three-quarters were less than confident about meeting their duties to promote a sustainable care market, under section 5 of the Care Act, up from 62% in 2019-20. Concerns were particularly acute in relation to residential and nursing care, with 98% concerned about the financial sustainability of some (77%), most (19%) or all (1%) of their providers, compared with 85% for home care. Of directors who had undertaken exercises to determine the costs of care faced by providers, 16% and 15%, respectively, said that at least a quarter of fees paid to residential, nursing or extra care providers were below the cost of care, for older or working-age adults.

The survey also found that 69% of directors were less than confident about fulfilling their Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards duties, up from 43% in 2019-20. With the new Liberty Protection Safeguards system due to come into force next April, directors rated their confidence in their readiness to implement at just 5.3 out of 10.

Prevention important but subject to cuts

And despite directors seeing investing in asset-based approaches and prevention and early intervention as the most important ways of making savings, half were less than confident about meeting their duties to provide preventive services, under section 2 of the Care Act, up from 35% in 2019-20. In addition, ADASS found that directors planned to spend 6.1% less on voluntary and community sector services in 2021-22 than 2019-20 – £465m compared with £504m – suggesting reductions in prevention funding.

“It is likely that this reduction is, in part at least, a consequence of the challenging budgetary situation facing adult social care and the need for directors to prioritise funding on meeting statutory duties which consequently means that budgets for discretionary services have had to be reduced year on year,” said the survey report.

One specific pressure identified by the report was the impact of the government’s shift to a policy of assessing hospital patients’ social care needs post-discharge, implemented last March to help clear hospital beds as the pandemic’s first wave hit.

Directors reported that this has led to a 27% increase in required social work capacity, because of the impact of assessing people in their own homes or multiple intermediate settings rather than in a single hospital.

‘Growing unmet and undermet need’

ADASS said the survey showed a picture of “growing unmet and undermet need which impacts on life and wellbeing”.

It added: “Every day directors, social workers and the councils they are in are having to make invidious decisions about who gets care and support, what they cannot afford to pay for, how much they charge, and to balance maintaining life-saving and sustaining support today versus reshaping care and support for the future.”

On the back of the survey, it called for the government to urgently publish its long-awaited plans to reform the funding of adult social care and to use the forthcoming government spending review to provide sustainable funding to meet immediate pressures and longer-term needs.

Charity Age UK issued a similar message, in blunter terms, in its response to the survey.

Charity director Caroline Abrahams said: “No local government official readily admits they are routinely breaking the law, and the fact that so many have done so in this survey shows just how bad a state social care is now in. We admire the honesty of these directors of adult social services, and sympathise with the increasingly impossible position they find themselves in, trying to spread the jam ever more thinly to meet a tsunami of local care needs – a situation made worse by the pandemic.

‘Ministers fiddle while social care burns’

“While ministers fiddle, social care burns, leaving hundreds of thousands of older and disabled people, and their family carers, without the support they need to live decent, dignified lives. The prime minister has promised to fix social care and he should live up to his pledge. It’s hard to imagine how the results of a survey like this could get much worse, but there’s no doubt they will, unless and until the government delivers on their promises.”

The survey ran from mid-May to mid-June 2021 and was answered by 147 out of the 152 directors. Figures on savings, costs and waiting times have been extrapolated from the data to provide nationwide estimates.