Family Law

George Eddon, Local Authority Solicitor. Special guardianship orders have been available to the courts since 30 December 2005, when the Adoption and Children 2002 was fully implemented. Now to be found in s 14A of the Children Act 1989, special guardianship is a completely new form of order. Like a residence order, it confers parental responsibility on the special guardian, but unlike a residence order, the holder is not obliged to share parental responsibility with the parents. Instead, the special guardian may decide to restrict the parents exercise of parental responsibility (PR), although the PR is never completely extinguished. This makes special guardianship an extremely powerful form of order. See February [2007] Fam Law for the full article.