Kinship Care
From September 2024 the non-statutory role of the virtual school has been extended to include a strategic responsibility for children in kinship care. Research has shown that children who grow up in kinship care have better outcomes than children who grow up in other types of non-parental care, however their outcomes still fall behind those children with no social worker involvement. This is an exciting development to our work as it will allow us to support a wider group of young people to meet their full potential.
The remit of virtual school heads already includes kinship children:
- who are looked-after
- who meet the definition of previously looked-after
- with a social worker.
Virtual school heads should expand the provision of advice and information, on request, to all kinship carers with special guardianship orders and child arrangement orders, regardless of whether their child was previously looked after by the local authority.
If you would like to have a discussion with the Virtual School about kinship care, please contact us at virtualschool.admin@wokingham.gov.uk
