Kinship care: what it is, and what you're entitled to

What kinship care actually means

"Kinship care" is an umbrella term, not a single legal status - it covers several genuinely different routes, and which one applies to your family changes both the legal picture and what financial support you can expect.

The four main routes are: family and friends fostering (a relative or friend formally approved as a foster carer), a Special Guardianship Order (a court order giving you parental responsibility, usually once a placement has settled), a Child Arrangements Order (formerly a "residence order," setting out who a child lives with), and informal arrangements made privately within a family with no court order at all.

Each route carries a different level of legal responsibility, and a different answer to the money question below - this page covers all four honestly, then links through to the full, dedicated guide on Special Guardianship Orders, the route most people searching for kinship support actually want detail on.

What you're entitled to, by route

Special Guardianship Order (SGO): support is means-tested and set at local authority discretion, though in most areas it's now aligned to the fostering NMA as a starting point before means-testing is applied. This is different enough from family and friends fostering that we cover it in full on its own page - see Special Guardianship Order allowances, explained.

Child Arrangements Order and informal arrangements: support here is the least standardised of the four routes - there's no national minimum allowance that applies, and what's available depends heavily on your local authority and your household's financial circumstances. This isn't a gap in our research; it reflects a genuinely patchier system. If this is your situation, contact your local authority's children's services or the charity Kinship for what's realistically available where you live, rather than relying on a single national figure.

The 2026 Kinship Zones pilot

From April 2026, the Department for Education is piloting a new Kinship Allowance in seven local authority "Kinship Zones," paid at the fostering National Minimum Allowance rate to kinship carers who are on the way to a Special Guardianship Order or a "lives with" Child Arrangements Order.

This matters because it's a direct, government-backed acknowledgement that support for SGO and Child Arrangements Order carers has historically lagged behind fostering allowances, even though the caring responsibility is often identical or heavier.

It is a pilot in specific areas, not (yet) a national entitlement - if you're in one of the pilot authorities this could apply to you directly; if you're not, it's still worth watching, since pilots that succeed are often the basis for wider rollout. We'll update this page as more detail on eligibility and the specific pilot areas is published.

Why kinship care is so under-covered elsewhere

Independent fostering agencies have little commercial reason to write about kinship care, because kinship carers usually aren't their customers - the child is often already placed within the family before an agency is ever involved, so there's no referral fee for an agency to earn from writing a helpful guide.

That's a structural gap in the market, not a coincidence, and it's exactly the kind of content only an independent, non-agency site has a real reason to publish properly - which is why kinship care sits high in our own build priorities, not buried as an afterthought behind mainstream fostering content.