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Residence Orders: Guardianship

Answer

The number of children on a residence order or special guardianship order at any point in time is not held centrally. The number of residence orders and special guardianship orders made by courts in England and Wales in the last five years is shown in the following table.

Number of residence and special guardianship orders made, 2004 to June 2009
	Court	Region
	Newcastle	London	Midlands	North East	North West	South East	South West	Wales	England and Wales
Public Law
Residence Orders
2004	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	2,765
2005	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	2,739
2006	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	2,688
2007	95	333	263	818	353	421	292	107	2,587
2008	59	248	418	734	361	508	381	93	2,743
January to June 2009	22	104	160	308	153	207	145	52	1,129
Special Guardianship Orders
2004	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
2005	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
2006	12	88	77	62	79	92	58	17	473
2007	24	99	100	136	148	116	85	40	724
2008	20	157	83	179	191	162	108	48	928
January to June 2009	18	67	54	77	107	56	40	21	422
Private Law
Residence Orders
2004	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	25,904
2005	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	24,335
2006	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	23,185
2007	210	2,888	4,333	4,234	4,008	4,196	3,036	1,390	24,085
2008	195	2,882	4,571	4,510	3,831	4,385	3,128	1,619	24,926
January to June 2009	58	1,285	2,358	2,174	2,018	2,204	1,600	708	12,347
Special Guardianship Orders
2004	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
2005	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
2006	1	23	29	13	12	46	22	13	158
2007	2	61	52	53	47	118	45	28	404
2008	17	72	68	51	88	127	64	37	507
January to June 2009	7	61	47	33	44	82	34	33	334
Notes:
1. Figures relate to the number of children subject to each order. More than one order may be made per child each year.
2. There have been data quality issues with figures for the family proceedings courts and a new method of data collection was introduced in April 2007 which has improved the level and accuracy of recording compared with previous year. For this reason regional and court level figures are not available pre 2007 and comparisons at a national level between pre and post 2007 figures should only be made with caution.
3. Figures are for special guardianship orders made in county and High Courts only. Separate figures for all family proceedings courts are not currently collected. Special guardianship orders came into force on 30 December 2005.
4. County court figures and figures for those family proceedings courts sharing administration with county courts are extracted from FamilyMan, a live system that is continually updated Therefore figures may differ slightly from those previously published.
Source:
HMCS FamilyMan system and manual returns.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

501 c802-4W; 302529

Session

2009-10

Subjects

Guardianship Residence orders

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk