The Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) is funded and managed by the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ). It is the first large-scale prospective longitudinal study of children and young people in out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia. Information on safety, permanency and wellbeing is being collected from various sources. The child developmental domains of interest are physical health, socio-emotional wellbeing and cognitive/learning ability. The overall aim of this study is to collect detailed information about the life course development of children who enter OOHC for the first time and the factors that influence their development.

This is the fourth report in the series of analyses using data from the Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) to examine the outcomes of children and young people who exited out-of-home care (OOHC) to guardianship orders. This series of analyses focuses on ‘transitioned guardians’; that is, OOHC relative/kinship carers who were allocated full parental responsibility for a child and were automatically transitioned to guardianship orders when the legislative amendment was proclaimed in 2014. The analyses used unweighted data from Waves 2, 3 and 4 of the POCLS interviews and the Department of Communities and Justice’s (DCJ) administrative data. Further analysis using subsequent waves of data collection will provide information on the longer term outcomes of children, and for children exiting from a variety of OOHC legal orders and placement types to guardianship orders.