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.
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 years. 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.