Joan Hunt

Joan Hunt recently retired from the University of Oxford, where she was a senior research fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Intervention. She is now honorary professor in Cardiff University Law School.

Her most recent research on kinship care is a project carried out in partnership with Family Rights Group, exploring the links between need, support and legal status (Hunt, J. and Waterhouse, S. (2012) Understanding Family and Friends care: the relationship between need, support and legal status, FRG and Hunt, J. and Waterhouse, S. (2013) It’s Just Not Fair! Support, need and legal status in family and friends care. FRG). Other empirical research on kinship care includes a major study of outcomes for children in kinship care (Hunt, J., Waterhouse, S. and Lutman, E: Keeping them in the Family: Outcomes for children placed in kinship care through care proceedings, BAAF).

She is the author of a scoping paper commissioned by the Department of Health to inform policy development (Hunt, J. (2003) Family and Friends Carers) and a briefing paper for social work practitioners and managers commissioned by Research in Practice (Research and Practice Briefing 16: Family and Friends Care (2008). This formed the basis of the research section in the Statutory Guidance on Family and Friends Care issued by the government in 2011.

Other publications on kinship care include chapters in Broad (2001): Kinship care: the placement choice for children and young people, Ebtehaj et al (2006): Kinship Matters; and Schofield and Simmonds (2009) The Child Placement Handbook: Research, Policy and Practice. She guest edited a special issue of Adoption and Fostering on kinship care (volume 13, autumn 2009).