Research published by NHS researchers in Birmingham has suggested that children who are made the subject of a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) could be at greater risk of abuse than the general population, despite such placements requiring carers to pass social care parenting assessments.
An SGO made in a family court places a child in the care of someone other than their parents, usually but not always a relative or someone the child already knows and has a relationship with. Many children are placed with their grandparents.
The research, published on 2 July, 2021, was carried out “to determine difference in frequency of referral for child protection medical examination (CPME) in children [in Birmingham in 2018] subject to special guardianship order (SGO), subject to child protection plan (CPP) or neither.”
The average age of the children included in the study at the time of the first child protection medical examination was 47 months (almost 4 years of age).
As well as raising concerns about abuse within special guardianship orders, the research also concludes that children subject to child protection plans might not be adequately protected from further abuse. Additionally, it found that children on child protection plans were 28 times more likely to come in to a clinical setting for a child protection medical examination.
The researchers concluded that children subject to special guardianship orders may be at higher risk of physical abuse, although less at risk than those subject to child protection plans.
The research is problematic for several reasons.
The study itself is small, and does not separate out other forms of court order, such as care orders, adoption orders, or foster placements.
It also cites bruises as the main type of non-accidental injury, which is controversial. This is because a growing number of social work academics are concerned that many bruises, particularly those found on pre-mobile children (those less than 6 months old) may be being wrongly classified as non accidental.
Distinguishing between accidental and non accidental bruising in children is particularly hard, and requires specialist knowledge. The research unfortunately does not clarify whether the professionals who diagnosed the bruises had received this training.
The researchers also note that children on a child protection plan are significantly over-represented when it comes to presenting for a child protection medical examination. Interestingly, they attribute this increase in examinations to professionals overseeing these child protection cases, who appear to be doing the referring for these examinations.
The study confirms a substantial data gap when it comes to children subject to SGOs and child protection plans, explaining as it does that the government is not required to record a lot of very significant details.
The conclusion for the study says:
“Our findings suggest that children subject to SGO may be at higher risk of physical abuse, although less at risk than those subject to CPP. At present, children subject to SGO can be invisible to services, with local authorities not required to keep records of these families. Services can only offer enhanced support if they are aware of the need.
Children subject to SGO should be considered as having additional need for support and be offered this routinely by health and social care services. At present, guardians are not entitled to the same level of assessment and support as adoptive parents, particularly if children were not previously in care.
There could be many more children subject to SGO experiencing abuse and neglect who do not require CPME. Further research is needed, detailing the frequency of SGO children presenting to social care with abuse and neglect so that the scale and nature of this problem can be accurately determined.
Only once we have a more nuanced understanding of the issues can we plan better assessments, support and monitoring for these vulnerable children.”
You can access the study here.
Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to this research.
Researching Reform 
My studies show that mental health issues is a major factor in children permanently removed from parents. SGO orders is not not the answer, the problems do not dissappear, they create further ongoing problems for the children. Money should be invested in helping children and parents remain together.
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People who have children, on SGO. Tell parents they have no rights, schools wont allow information given to parents. This needs looking at as well.
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I didn’t see the study differentiate between foster carers or family members who have an SGO. It’s my understanding that grandparents are often bypassed as carers & that foster carers were pressured to become Special Guardians (Wade et al 2015) for financial expediency.
The misuse of SGOs was tantamount to permanence on the cheap. Foster carers felt they were being blackmailed into becoming Special Guardians. They were told if they didn’t take out an SGO the child would be moved. 40% felt pressured & 20% strongly pressured. Half felt they were unprepared to take on that responsibility. There was also concern that orders were being made were being made when no relationship between the child & Special Guardians had been established. Furthermore SGOs were being introduced far earlier than should have been the case, before a full assessment of the child needs was made. 1/3 of carers in the Wade et al study failed to get a break & 1/4 said they were tired “most of the time”. Adequate support packages were not guaranteed. One hopes the situation is better now.
SGOs came into use in 2005. The intention was to provide permanency for a child or young person where the child was already part of the family, usually the birth family but increasingly with foster carers. The child is no longer looked after by the council.
A SGO discharges any existing care order or related section 34 contact order. Special Guardians have parental responsibility.
Worryingly the Specials Guardians can refuse to allow contact with the birth family if they feel it’s in the child’s best interest. This is despite knowledge of the benefits to the child that has contact with their birth family.
The court can also give leave for the child to be known by a new surname.
In my opinion Special Guardian Orders are adoption by the back door.
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Accuracy note:
According to Family Lives.org on Special Guardians they state what the role of the local authority is, with regard to Special Guardians. I would like to pick up on what they say about contact.
*A recommendation about contact & special guardianship.
*Assistance with the arrangements for contact between a child, his/her parents & any other relatives that the authority considers to be beneficial.
So contact can be vetoed by the Local Authority when they do their assessment &/or the Special Guardians can veto contact.
* Implications of the making of a Special Guardianship Order for all those involved.
It’s a shame they don’t include the birth family advising them what those implications are!
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‘The study confirms a substantial data gap when it comes to children subject to SGOs and child protection plans, explaining as it does that the government is not required to record a lot of very significant details.’
Would this also include Special Guardians, where there has been serious procedural error because to this day, and the child is now older, just still not 18 years old, said alleged Special Guardians got granted said Court Order but has never received it from the secret family court; yet and unbelievably so they’ve had no problems registering said child into school etc.
What would happen were there to be a predicament like this and they decided to change the child’s name. Would it be permitted done under the tables.
This same case is the same Council who my 2nd long term SW asked to ‘borrow’ my son’s birth certificate. Only it had not been intended to borrow it at all.
When my Case went to final hearing, and it was realised judgement needed to be reserved through some quite serious errors or so called errors, because I believe there was every intention for it to be done deliberate based on my first-hand experience and written evidence, some of which went ignored completely once sent into secret family Court may I add, said LT SW had admitted when I asked further that the Judge needed to see it and I agreed on the premise I’d get it back re sentimental value plus I had paid for it, so I see it as theft when parents do not get them back.
But anyway, the Judge set a new timescale for the Final Hearing, but not until the year earlier, just after what was now the Reserved Hearing, I got sent ‘a copy’ of my son’s birth certificate back instead with a newer date added on and signed for that same year 4 years after he was born!
Said LT SW did not believe me when she came out to our house so I showed her. She said that is unusual, they don’t normally get sent to the birth parents.
So to me, this was pre-planned I’d be losing my son forcibly to adoption premeditated before my Case was over and 12 months before the Final Hearing, yet THREE YEARS before the alleged adoption hearing and alleged because I went on to learn with evidence there was no official record of an adoption for my son.
The relevance and the connection is and although I’ve not named anyone, is that both of our Cases stem from the same Council. So what on earth is really going on.
Other parents have also shared with me, as in natural blood parents that a SGO Order intended to be a step down from an Adoption Order is only treated the same way anyway and they find it difficult therefore to decipher a difference and not what the SGO Order was intended for.
Said SGO Orders came back in around 2004 or so one barrister I had, had me believe. The reason I can remember is because he told me they were in existence before but making a comeback. He tried for one of these for me instead, said offer was declined.
I would very much like to know exactly what is going on with records held for all these children in the Care System. Parents need to go after what’s held on Consumer Relations files records, a department at their Council. They may well be very surprised at the discrepancies with names, dates and events that their Council is holding, when comparing it to the large marginal difference with what the Secret Family Court holds.
Is there space or room for said Cases and what help and support out there exists, when no Court Order really took place. I’ve learnt through first-hand knowledge and Court experience that there is no jurisdiction to investigate such complaints as alleged adoption, where there is no official record to prove there was or is one so my biggest concern is-
Are such children really been safeguarded with a gap in the market where there is NO Court Order. What on earth is really going on Xxxx
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So we are to believe Adopters and other’s are more trained up somehow ? … Really ? In what ? How to behave that fictitious identity is somehow “real” and “good for the child” whilst birth identity identification remains a taboo ? Oh dear oh dear oh dear … Who the feck did this research?… Social constructionists ?
SGO’s if they are indeed “untrained” can just as easily do some “empathy courses on feeling the child’s feelings” and learn about checkback on their own adult unhelpful “projections” ..
Adopters needs BIG therapy lessons in their own narcissistic needs to make someone else’s child into “their own” (in law the phrase is : “As if born of the marriage of the Adopters”)
God help us Adoptees experienced in the hell of Adoption that are trying to tell people Adoption often drives people half crazy or neurotic and there is a high risk .. Very high .. It’s being buried in all sorts of ways too ..The mental hospitals pick it up and other forms of distressed “child care” ..
Please pass on the details of this research team…. It’s in my city and no-one is listening to Adult Adoptees with lived experiences ….On we go down the drain year after year without anyone recruiting us … Typical of closed systems ..
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Ahhhh so this is the lady to go to: j.taylor.1@bham.ac.uk..
These researching folk though rarely seems to do the obvious research of going to patients right across Bham and other areas and asking if they want to fill in a “Child Care Pattern Analysis” of their lives….. Because in Mental Health systems we are picking up mass care-failure from childhood onwards and that includes State Looked after kids , foster kids and Adoptees..
A proper Child Abuse Audit like this needs to be done with a patient-choiceful therapy-availability audit done too in parallel because there is such rubbish therapy (certainly in B’ham too) that is so risk averse to aiding adults to grieve for their lost lives of bad care and often decades long uncried pain …
Jeese the stupidity of the intellectual well paid brigades on this is massive .. If you have an Empathy Quotient (EQ) you can see and feel the truth in patients ..But no-one goes too near this …. It’s electric with taboo ..Thus it continues silently screaming out in other ways …
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Under a Special Guardianship Order I was unaware that it’s adoption by the back door. I thought I could still see my grandchildren. I was unaware my grandchildren’s names could be changed, as they are in adoption. Their identity put on hold until they reach 18 years. How do they go back to their real names? How many names are changed? Why aren’t the family told?
I was unaware that all Contact would be stopped in preparation for, in our case, foster carers taking a SGO & they were in agreement with the social workers decision, after an assessment & for all I know they might even have stated it as a condition before agreeing to be SGs. Research has found that Contact with birth family is problematic. The children want to go home. Seeing their family reinforces that desire & triggers emotions that can be disruptive. The child’s voice is clearly ignored.
I was unaware initially the foster carers were unable to have children themselves but they didn’t want a full on adoption because that would sever the financial link & as foster carers previously, unlike kinship carers, they secured an excellent financial package to become SGs, well in excess of what they would get if they remained as foster carers. However that financial package was a motivation to keep both grandchildren together as the Care Plans initially wanted the youngest formally adopted but the potential adopters changed their mind, or at least that was what was told to us.
The SGs lied in court about what my daughter has said to them in a meeting. They claimed she threatened them. The senior social worker who was present at the time rebutted the SGs claims but that part wasn’t mentioned in court.
They lied to us, the grandparents, the first & only time we met, just before the SGO court hearing. They told us they had no problems about us having contact with our grandchildren & would even encourage the children to have contact with us but the pre written papers they submitted in court stated otherwise.
The Special Guardians were very good at telling us what we wanted to hear in person but they are liars & there was nothing we could do about it. It hurts to know my grandchildren live with financially motivated liars & I wonder what else they have done & would do to further their lifestyle.
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Your case seems very painfully individual because some SGO’s are other carers inside birth family but offering stability and not name changes .. It seems to me these SGO’s you are referring to had it in mind to create a quasi-adoption which even disrupted the child’s birth identity with some needed maternal continuity ..
The one problem I see (as an Adoptee) is SGO’s have been given less resources to learn parenting or “filling in skills” (from the Adoption Support Fund) – when you examine the work of the All Party Group on Adoption Permanence you see the proof there … Adoption in fact is given most of the resources (Helping Adopters with parenting skills) whilst creating identity continuity is not seen as a priority with the use of SGO’s ..
It may be seriously painful for all concerned to “lose” a child to “alternative care” – but the loss of identity emerges in some of us Adoptee as mentally devastating .. Just saying ..
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