The special guardianship review was commissioned by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory in response to a Court of Appeal call last year for "authoritative, evidence-based guidance for the use of SGOs".
It finds that SGOs provide children with a safe, permanent home with family members - preserving the legal link with the birth parents but handing parental responsibility to the relatives.
However, it concludes that reform is needed and makes a number of recommendations which it believes will benefit children and carers.
The research comes against a background of increasing use of SGOs to place children with relatives following care proceedings, in cases where the child did not have a pre-existing strong relationship with those relatives.
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