Informal Kinship Care in Wales: Risks of No Legal Order

Thousands of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends in Wales are raising a relative's child with no court order in place. The arrangement may have started as a temporary solution — the parent went into hospital, got arrested, or simply stopped coping — and weeks turned into months. It works day to day, until it does not. Informal kinship care carries real risks that become visible only when something goes wrong.

You Have No Parental Responsibility

If you are caring under a purely informal arrangement and do not otherwise hold parental responsibility, it stays with the person or people who already hold it, usually the birth parents. That means you cannot independently:

• Give formal consent for non-emergency medical treatment without authorization from someone with parental responsibility
• Make school admissions or other decisions that require parental responsibility without that person's authorization
• Apply for a passport for the child
• Make decisions about the child's religion, surname, or long-term living arrangements

Some schools and GP surgeries accept authorization from a person with parental responsibility; ask each provider what it requires. Without that authorization, they may ask you to get the parent's consent.

The Parent Can Take the Child Back

The hardest risk to accept: a birth parent who retains full parental responsibility can collect the child from your home at any time. There is no legal mechanism to stop them unless you have a court order or the local authority obtains an emergency protection order.

Without an order, a birth parent who retains parental responsibility is generally not legally prevented from collecting the child; the school will still follow its safeguarding and collection procedures. If you call the police, they will generally not intervene in a parental-responsibility dispute — it is a civil matter, not a criminal one, unless there is an immediate safeguarding risk.

Benefits and Financial Support Are Harder to Access

Informal kinship carers may claim Child Benefit if the child lives with them and they are responsible for the child's upkeep. Only one person can receive it. If a birth parent's claim is active and you cannot agree who should claim, HMRC decides; you do not need to wait for a court order to make a claim.

You may also be able to add a child who normally lives with you to your Universal Credit claim. DWP may ask for evidence that you are responsible for the child; a court order can help show the arrangement, but an informal carer can still report the child to DWP.

The most significant financial gap: simply caring informally does not make you eligible to request a Section 14F Special Guardianship Support Needs Assessment. The assessment is for a child subject to or proposed for an SGO, the special guardian or prospective special guardian, the child's birth parents, and a child of the special guardian living in the household. If you plan to apply for an SGO, you can request this assessment; a means-tested allowance may follow depending on the council's assessment and policy.

Discretionary Local Authority Support

Under Part 4 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, Welsh local authorities can provide family support services to informal kinship carers. This is discretionary, not mandatory. Some councils are proactive about supporting informal carers (Swansea's FAFT team, for example, works with informal carers who are not yet in the court system). Others will only engage if a safeguarding concern triggers children's services involvement.

If you are caring informally and want to explore support, contact your local authority's children's services team and ask about their family-and-friends policy. The conversation does not commit you to a court application — but it does put you on the council's radar, which can be helpful if you later decide to formalise the arrangement.

When to Get a Legal Order

Consider formalising the arrangement if:

• The child has been living with you for more than a few weeks and the parent is not in a position to resume care
• You are struggling to access medical care, school places, or benefits
• You are worried the parent might remove the child from your care
• The local authority has suggested you apply for an SGO or Child Arrangements Order

A Child Arrangements Order gives you shared parental responsibility and legally confirms the child lives with you. A Special Guardianship Order gives you enhanced parental responsibility that overrides the parent's day-to-day authority and opens access to the full Section 14F support framework.

The Kinship Care in Wales guide explains both routes step by step — including the three-month notice requirement, court forms, fees, and how to access financial support once a legal order is in place.

See more Wales guides →