Undertaking a Kinship Care Assessment: A guide to collecting and analysing information for Form K (England)

This book will be used for kinship assessments using Form K. If you are still using Form C for kinship assessments, you will need the book Undertaking a Connected Persons Assessment.

Undertaking a Kinship Care Assessment is designed to help social workers gather relevant and proportionate assessment information to complete robust and evidence-based assessments of prospective kinship carers and identify support needs to mitigate risk and vulnerabilities.  It can be used by assessing social workers using CoramBAAF Kinship Care Assessment (Form K) (England) published in 2025. Form K can be used to assess any prospective kinship carer and to enable approval as a kinship foster carer (connected carer/family and friends) or to recommend special guardianship orders.  

Who is this book for? 

This bestselling guide is invaluable for all those completing kinship assessments in England.  It may be particularly helpful to those who are new to the task, or anyone who wants to ensure they consider and analyse all the information required for these often very complex assessments.

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What you will find in this book 

The guide sets out some of the key principles of robust kinship assessment, including how to amplify the voice of the child and explore the meaning of the pre-existing relationship between the child and their prospective carer. It outlines information required for all 3 parts of Form K and the integral support plan, including past and current information about the prospective carers, how this might influence their care of the child/ren, and what support might be needed.  Each chapter in the guide considers a different part  of the assessment, and presents a list of helpful questions that can facilitate further discussion, as well as prompts to support your analysis.  

Logically structured and very accessibly presented, this guide: 

• assists the assessing social worker in collecting some of the information necessary to complete a comprehensive kinship assessment
• prompts the assessing social worker to analyse the assessment information to make clear and robust recommendations and identify support needs
• directs the assessing social worker to relevant research and good practice  

The guide also includes reflections on the context of kinship assessment practice, some of the challenges and the key principles of good assessment practice. It considers the relevant legal orders, research and learning from safeguarding reviews.

About the authors 

Ann Horne qualified as a social worker in 2002, and joined CoramBAAF in 2021 as a kinship consultant. She has 20 years’ experience in local authority children’s services, working in safeguarding before specialising in kinship care for 14 years. Ann is a co-Chair of the Kinship Care Alliance. She is an experienced trainer and also works part time as a training development consultant for CoramBAAF.  

Clare Seth qualified as a social worker in 1998, and joined CoramBAAF in 2021 as a kinship consultant. She has 19 years’ experience in local authority children’s services, including safeguarding, fostering and co-managing a children’s social work team. Clare continues to practise as a freelance social worker specialising in kinship assessment, alongside assessing and supporting prospective adopters. Clare is an experienced trainer and Chair of adoption disruption meetings.  

Paul Adams is an independent trainer, consultant and practitioner, with an expertise in fostering. He has managed childcare teams and fostering services, and has considerable experience as a panel Chair and decision maker. He has authored numerous good practice guides and practice notes, and the original edition of Undertaking a connected person/family and friends assessment.  

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