Family law guide
By Iblal Iqbal
Part of: Section 47 Report Explained: What Happens During Section 47 Enquiries?
Section 20 Children Act 1989 lets a local authority accommodate your child with your agreement, and the agreement is the whole of it. No court has ordered anything, and therefore the local authority gains no parental responsibility. Anyone who holds parental responsibility can take the child out of that accommodation at any time (s.20(8)). Nobody explains that at the kitchen table. Knowing it changes what you say next. Our children law specialists assist and advise at every stage. This page covers the law of England and Wales only.
Reviewed by: Garry Steedman, Family Law Consultant (Divorce, Children & TOLATA), Kabir Family Law
People call it a section 20. Its full name is section 20 Children Act 1989, and it is an arrangement rather than an order. The statutory wording lets a local authority accommodate a child: with a relative, in foster care, or in a residential placement. Your child becomes a “looked after” child. You stay the parent. Your parental responsibility survives intact, and the arrangement lasts exactly as long as your agreement does.
Subsection (1) creates a duty. It bites where a child in need has nobody with parental responsibility, or is lost or abandoned, or the person caring for them cannot provide suitable accommodation. Subsection (4) creates a discretion instead, and it goes further. A local authority may accommodate a child even though a parent with parental responsibility could house that child, so long as it considers that accommodation would safeguard or promote the child’s welfare.
In practice, social workers usually rely on subsection (4) when they arrive and ask a parent to agree. So ask which subsection they have in mind. The answer tells you a great deal about how they see your case.
| Social services can | Social services cannot |
|---|---|
| Ask you to agree, and explain why they are asking | Make you sign anything |
| Accommodate your child where you agree, even if you could house the child yourself (s.20(4)) | Use section 20 at all where a parent who can house the child objects (s.20(7)) |
| Choose the placement, and run day-to-day arrangements | Acquire parental responsibility, or override yours, without a court order |
| Set out in a plan how often you will see your child | Keep the child after a parent with parental responsibility removes them (s.20(8)) |
| Apply to court if it believes it can prove the threshold criteria | Treat your agreement as a substitute for that application indefinitely |
Above all, consent draws the line down the middle of that table. Withdraw consent and almost everything in the left-hand column needs a court order instead. That is why the conversation in your living room matters so much, and why it so often happens in a rush.
No statutory form exists. A section 20 notice, or a section 20 agreement, is simply the local authority’s own record: your child’s details, where they will live, who will see them, and your signature. The document does not create the power. Section 20 Children Act 1989 does that. The paperwork only records that you agreed.
Signing transfers no parental responsibility. It makes nothing permanent. It does not stop you asking for your child to come home. What it does is start a clock that runs in the local authority’s favour: assessments, meetings, a care plan, and a growing file. Where the concerns involve significant harm, a court will one day read that file.
Every parenting forum repeats “never sign a section 20”, and it is too blunt to help anyone. Refusal is a real right, and sometimes refusal is the right call. Even so, it never comes free.
Most parents answer that question within an hour, alone, with a social worker waiting. This is the decision point where the case quietly goes right or expensively wrong.
Subsection (8) is unusually plain. Anyone who holds parental responsibility can remove the child from section 20 accommodation at any time. Moreover, the section sets no notice period, and nobody has to give you permission.
First, a child of 16 or over who agrees to accommodation governs the position themselves, and subsections (7), (8) and (9) fall away. Second, where a special guardian agrees, or the person named in a child arrangements order as the one your child lives with agrees, subsection (9) removes both the right to object and the right to remove. Third, a local authority that wants to keep the child has exactly one lawful route: court. If it takes that route, read our guides to interim and final care orders and to discharging a care order.
One warning. Announce that you are removing your child, with no advice and nowhere settled for the child to go, and a social worker will record that as evidence about your judgement. Exercise the right deliberately.
No statutory maximum exists. As a result, courts have criticised exactly that gap, because voluntary accommodation can drift for months with no judge, no timetable and no end date. The law answers with a review timetable instead.
Use those dates. Each review is your moment to ask, in writing, what the plan for your child is and what has to change. If nobody can answer, that is the answer.
Once your child is looked after, consultation becomes a legal duty rather than a courtesy. Before any decision about a child it looks after, a local authority must so far as reasonably practicable find out the wishes and feelings of the child, the parents, anyone else with parental responsibility, and anyone else it considers relevant (s.22(4)). It must then give those wishes due consideration, alongside the child’s age and understanding, and the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background (s.22(5)). Before it accommodates your child at all, it must also find out what your child wants (s.20(6)).
So you can expect a question in advance about a change of placement, a change in contact, or a change to the plan. By contrast, hearing about a decision afterwards is not consultation. A short, calm email asking them to consult you before the next decision does more for you than any argument at the door.
Section 20 Children Act 1989 rarely stands alone. Instead it sits inside a wider process. Work out which stage you have reached, and you will know how much time you have.
Reasonable cause to suspect significant harm triggers enquiries. Our guides to the section 47 report and the child protection conference cover that stage. Section 20 usually surfaces here, as the alternative to court.
Where concerns continue, the local authority normally writes a letter before proceedings. It sets out the concerns, what must change, and an invitation to a meeting before any court application. Treat it as a formal step, not a warning shot. It is the last comfortable moment to take advice. This pre-proceedings framework comes from the Department for Education’s statutory guidance, Children Act 1989: court orders.
A court may only make a care or supervision order once it finds two things: that the child suffers, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, and that the harm is attributable to the care given or likely to be given, or to the child being beyond parental control (s.31(2)). That burden sits with the local authority, never with you. Once proceedings begin, interim and final care orders take over, and your right to family life under Article 8 shapes every decision.
Raise two alternatives early, because a settled plan makes both much harder: a family group conference, and kinship care with a relative you trust. A relative who steps forward in week one stands in a completely different position from one who offers in month nine. Ask for a family group conference in writing, and name the relative in the same message.
Choose where you are, then tick what is already true. Nothing here goes anywhere. The gaps are what to raise before you answer.
There is no score. Anything you cannot tick yet deserves a question before you agree, or before the next review.
Those calls turn on your facts, and on what everyone has already said. They are far easier to get right before you sign.
Book a free initial consultation
One of our specialists will give you initial advice on your situation.
Most of the damage happens in the first fortnight, because nobody has taken advice yet. In fact, we see the same patterns again and again.
Here is the part almost nobody sets out for a parent, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Three statutory clocks govern what happens next. However, they run at completely different speeds, and only one of them answers to you. Put the dates side by side and the strategy becomes obvious.
| The clock | How long it runs | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary accommodation under section 20 | No statutory limit at all. Reviews only: 20 working days, then 3 months, then every 6 months | reg.33, Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 |
| Care proceedings, once the local authority applies | The court must dispose of the application within 26 weeks of issue. Extensions run to 8 weeks, but nobody grants them routinely and each needs specific justification | Children Act 1989, s.32(1)(a)(ii), (5) and (7) |
| A relative applying to become a special guardian | Cannot even issue the application until the relative has given the local authority three months’ written notice, and the court needs a local authority report before it can make the order | Children Act 1989, s.14A(7), (8) and (11) |
Read the three rows together. A relative needs three months before anyone can issue an application, and a local authority report after that. Meanwhile, care proceedings aim to finish in 26 weeks. So a grandparent or an aunt named in week one, while the arrangement is still voluntary, has room for a proper assessment. One named in month nine, with a court timetable already running, very often does not.
Therefore the real argument is for using the voluntary period rather than resenting it. It is the only stretch of time in this process that nobody else is counting down. Is there anyone in your family who could care for your child? Say their name at the first meeting, not the fourth.
Our specialists assist and advise from the moment social services raise accommodation. They work out which subsection is really in play, because subsection (1) and subsection (4) put you in different positions. Then they go through the document line by line, and tell you what it commits you to. They help you ask the questions that shape everything afterwards: where, for how long, who will my child see, and what has to change. Where a relative could care for your child, they help you put that person forward early, and in a form that compels an assessment. And if the case moves towards court, they prepare you for the first hearing rather than letting it arrive.
A free initial consultation is a conversation with a specialist, who gives you initial advice on your circumstances. It does not include drafting or reviewing documents. Before the call, note who visited, what they said, whether anyone put anything in writing, and the name of any relative who could help.
An agreement, not a court order. Section 20 Children Act 1989 lets a local authority accommodate a child where someone with parental responsibility agrees. Your child becomes a looked after child. You stay the parent, the local authority gains no parental responsibility, and the arrangement lasts as long as your agreement does.
No. No statutory form exists and nobody can require your signature. Where a parent with parental responsibility can house the child and objects, the local authority cannot use section 20 at all (s.20(7)). If it still believes your child faces risk, its route is court, not your signature.
Too blunt. Refusal is a genuine right, and sometimes the better course, but it does not end the concern and it can move the case into court sooner. A voluntary arrangement you can end, with a relative you chose, beats an order a judge makes on the local authority’s evidence. Ask what the arrangement says, rather than whether to sign.
Usually, yes. Anyone with parental responsibility can remove the child from section 20 accommodation at any time (s.20(8)), and the section sets no notice period. Two exceptions apply: a child of 16 or over who agrees to accommodation (s.20(11)), and a special guardian or named carer who agrees (s.20(9)). Take advice first, because acting with no plan can prompt a court application.
No statutory limit exists, which is exactly why arrangements drift. The safeguard is the review timetable: a first review within 20 working days of the child becoming looked after, a second within three months, then intervals of not more than six months where reasonably practicable (reg.33 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010). Several reviews with no plan for your child to come home means the arrangement stopped being temporary some time ago.
No. Only a care order transfers parental responsibility to a local authority (s.33(3)). Under section 20 it makes day-to-day decisions about the placement and should consult you about the rest. Your parental responsibility does not change, and you share it with nobody new.
Before any decision about a child it looks after, a local authority must so far as reasonably practicable find out the wishes and feelings of the child, the parents and anyone else with parental responsibility, then give them due consideration along with the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background (s.22(4) and (5)). Before accommodating the child it must also find out what the child wants (s.20(6)). Hearing about a decision afterwards is not consultation.
The letter a local authority normally sends before it applies to court. It sets out the concerns, what must change, and an invitation to a meeting. The Department for Education’s statutory guidance on court orders under the Children Act 1989 describes this pre-proceedings stage. Once one arrives, the case sits close to court, and it is the last comfortable moment to take advice.
A court may only make a care or supervision order once it finds two things: that the child suffers, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, and that the harm is attributable to the care given or likely to be given, or to the child being beyond parental control (s.31(2)). Harm covers ill-treatment and the impairment of health or development (s.31(9)). The local authority must prove it and a court decides it. Agreeing to section 20 admits nothing.
Not under section 20. Without your agreement the local authority must go to court and satisfy a judge, or in an emergency rely on police protection powers or seek an emergency protection order. That is a much higher bar than asking you to sign. Refusal is therefore a real decision rather than a gesture, and a real decision deserves advice rather than pressure.
A section 20 request almost always arrives at the worst possible moment, with a social worker in your front room and a form on the table. You may say that you want advice first. What you agree to in the next hour shapes where your child lives, how often you see them, and how a court will one day read the file. Book a free initial consultation, and one of our specialists will give you initial advice on your options, so the decision belongs to you rather than to the clock.
Book a free initial consultation or call 0330 094 5880
You can also read our guides to the section 47 report and to interim and final care orders.
General information about the law in England and Wales, not advice on your circumstances.
Parents ask me whether to sign. That is almost never the right question, because the signature matters least of everything on the table. Four other things matter far more: where your child goes, who your family has put forward, how long this should last, and what has to change for your child to come home. Ask those four before you answer anything, and ask for the answers in writing. Do that, and the local authority treats you as a partner in the plan. Argue only about the form, and it treats you as an obstacle. The file remembers which one you were.
Iblal Iqbal, Partner & Family Law Strategist
Short videos from the Kabir Family Law team, explaining family law in plain English.
We are a team of legally trained family law and divorce specialists with years of experience across all areas of family law. We are not part of a firm of solicitors, do not undertake legal reserved activities unless permitted and are therefore entirely independent. Please subscribe to our mailing list.
Type a topic to see the pages that cover it, or choose one below.
Or choose a topic
Or call us on 0330 094 5880
A few things we have shared lately. Plain answers, quiet updates, and the occasional reminder that you are not the first person to stand where you are standing.
Kabir Family Law, the start of the bright side of life.
View this Facebook post, opens in a new tab
When the roots are deep there is no reason to fear the wind.
View this Instagram post, opens in a new tab
Kabir Family Law brings hope to families in times of crisis.
View this X post, opens in a new tab
You are never truly alone. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask…
View this Facebook post, opens in a new tab
Would you rather talk it through with someone?
Book a free consultationThe first conversation with one of our family law specialists costs nothing.
12 Cathedral Rd
Pontcanna
Cardiff
CF11 9LJ
Friars House,
Coventry
CV1 2TE
Chester House
1st and 3rd Floors
81 - 83 Fulham High Street
Fulham
London
SW63JA
16 High Holborn
Holborn
London
WC1V6BX
Clavering House
Clavering Place
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE1 3NG
20-30a Abington Street
Northampton
NN1 2JA
2 King St
Nottingham
NG1 2AS
1 & 3 Kings Meadow
Oxford
OX2 0DP
2 Copenhagen St
Worcester
WR1 2HB
Tower Court
3 Oakdale Road
North Yorkshire
York
YO30 4XL
You do not need the right words. Tell us what is happening, or pick whatever comes closest.
What is happening?