Form C8: Keeping Your Address Confidential in an SGO Application

When you file a special guardianship order application, your address normally appears on the court documents served on the respondents — usually the child's birth parents. If sharing your address with a birth parent would put you or the child at risk, Form C8 keeps it confidential.

What Form C8 Does

Form C8 is a separate, confidential form that you file with your main application (Forms C1 and C13A). It lists your name and the contact details you want kept private. The form says these details are for the court and Cafcass or Cafcass Cymru, and will not be available to another person except by court order.

You must also make sure that no other form or document you file includes the contact details you want to keep private. Court staff do not check other documents for accidental disclosure.

When to File It

File Form C8 if any of the following apply:

• You fear domestic abuse or violence from the child's birth parent and do not want them to know where you live
• The child was removed from the birth parent because of violence, substance abuse or neglect, and knowing your address could enable the parent to turn up unannounced
• You have moved specifically to protect the child and disclosing your new address would undermine that safety measure
• A social worker or police officer has advised that the birth parent should not know where the child is living

The form asks you to list the contact details you want kept private; it does not ask for a written explanation of the risk. The court treats these requests seriously — judges are well aware that SGO cases often involve family situations where a parent's behaviour was the reason the child needed alternative care.

How to Complete It

Form C8 is straightforward:

1. Your details — your full name and the contact details you want to keep private
2. The children — list the full names of the children whose contact details you want kept private
3. The omitted contact details — list only details you want to keep private and that the other people in the case do not already know

If you are applying jointly, each applicant who wants their contact details kept private should complete a separate C8.

Filing It With Your Application

Submit Form C8 with your C1, C13A and FM1 as a separate document. HMCTS says not to attach it to another form; if filing by email, send it as a separate attachment.

If you are posting your application, identify it as a confidential Form C8 in your covering letter.

What If You Forget to File It

If you file your C1 and C13A without a C8, your address will appear on the documents served on the respondents. You can file a C8 later and ask the court to redact your address from documents already served, but this is difficult to undo if the respondent has already seen the paperwork. File it at the outset to avoid this problem.

C8 and the Three Months' Notice

Here is a practical tension many applicants overlook: the three months' written notice to the local authority under Section 14A(7) requires your name and address. If the child is not looked after by the local authority, the notice goes to the council where you live — so the council will know your address.

The notice letter itself is not served on the birth parents. But during the assessment, the social worker will visit your home. If you have safety concerns, raise them with the social worker at the earliest opportunity so that the assessment report does not inadvertently disclose your location.

The Complete Application Bundle

Form C8 is one of five forms in the SGO filing package. Our Special Guardianship Orders in England guide includes a step-by-step checklist for assembling the full application bundle — C1, C13A, FM1, C8 and EX160 — with guidance on which forms are mandatory, which are conditional, and how to file them correctly.

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