Law Commission proposes new Kinship Care Order and PR agreements
The Law Commission has launched a consultation on reforming kinship care law in England and Wales, including a bespoke Kinship Care Order and new parental responsibility agreements.
The Law Commission has published a consultation paper proposing major reforms to kinship care law in England and Wales, including a new Kinship Care Order and a new route for Kinship Parental Responsibility Agreements.[S1] The project is intended to make kinship arrangements easier to navigate and to reduce inconsistencies between the different legal orders currently used to formalise care by relatives and family friends.[S1]
What the consultation proposes
The consultation paper says kinship care is when a child is cared for by an adult who is not their parent for a significant period, usually a relative or family friend, and that such arrangements may be temporary or long term.[S1] It explains that kinship care is often used either as an alternative to a child entering the care system or when a child is already the subject of a care order.[S1]
One of the Law Commission’s provisional proposals is a single bespoke Kinship Care Order that could be tailored to the child’s circumstances and to the needs of the parents and kinship carer.[S1] The consultation also proposes Kinship Parental Responsibility Agreements, which would allow parents to confer parental responsibility on kinship carers without court proceedings.[S1]
Why the reform matters
The current law uses a patchwork of arrangements, including special guardianship orders, child arrangements orders and fostering, and the Law Commission says this can be difficult for kinship carers to navigate.[S1] In its reform programme, the Commission noted that the range of routes for formalising kinship care can be confusing and that carers may not feel confident that the order underpinning their arrangement best fits their family’s situation.[S1]
That makes the consultation significant for family lawyers, because advice on kinship placements often has to balance immediate safety, parental rights, local authority involvement and longer-term permanence.[S1] If the Commission’s proposals are taken forward, practitioners may need to rethink how they advise on the choice between informal kinship care, court-based orders and more permanent legal arrangements.[S1]
Consultation timetable and policy context
The consultation paper was published on 8 July 2026, and the consultation remains open until 16 October 2026.[S1] The Law Commission says it is seeking views on how the law could be reformed to make kinship care options easier to understand and to address differences in rights and responsibilities across the existing legal framework.[S1]
The project sits within the Law Commission’s wider kinship care work, which the government has previously identified as a review of legal statuses and orders for kinship carers to help simplify and streamline the framework.[S1] The policy background also includes the Department for Education’s kinship care guidance for local authorities, which sets out how councils should support children in kinship care and the duties they owe to kinship families.[S1]
Practical implications for lawyers and carers
If adopted, a bespoke Kinship Care Order could become a central option in cases where families currently rely on a mix of private law orders and local authority-led arrangements.[S1] A parental responsibility agreement route would be especially important in lower-conflict cases, because it could avoid the time, cost and stress of court proceedings while still giving carers formal legal authority.[S1]
For practitioners, the key issue will be how any new order interacts with existing permanence pathways, especially special guardianship, child arrangements orders and fostering.[S1] The consultation suggests the Commission is looking for a framework that is easier to understand and more adaptable to the realities of kinship placements, rather than one that simply adds another layer to an already complex system.[S1]
What happens next
The consultation period runs until mid-October 2026, after which the Law Commission will consider responses before deciding whether to recommend legislation.[S1] For now, the proposal marks one of the most significant attempts in recent years to redesign the legal architecture governing kinship care in England and Wales.[S1]