Kinship carer assessments: An Anglo-Welsh perspective

This article focuses on kinship carer assessments in two countries of the United Kingdom-England and Wales. After outlining the legal and organisational context, it sets out the risk and protective factors identified in research and the key elements that the research and practice literature suggest should be included in a comprehensive carer assessment. It then reports on the challenges facing practitioners conducting assessments, drawing on the author's recent research on the experiences of specialist kinship social workers, before briefly considering research on carers' experiences of assessment. It concludes with some thoughts on possible ways forward in England and Wales to deal with the issues that have emerged.