Two recent reports provide insight for councils
There has recently been significant focus on how councils can ensure the right homes for children in their care, as well as how kinship arrangements can be strengthened to help more children stay safely with their wider families.
These conversations are very positive. However, an area that has been less at the forefront of the discussion is adoption.
While many children in care experience permanence through foster care or a return home, for thousands of children each year adoption is the opportunity to experience a lifelong connection, a sense of belonging and a feeling of psychological permanence with a new family.
What actions can councils be taking to make sure that adoption services are as effective as they can be, for those children for whom adoption is the right choice – but also for birth families, adopters and adopted adults?
Two recent publications offer some insight.
Adoption England, a collaboration of regional adoption agencies (RAAs), has recently launched its 2024-27 adoption strategy for England.
It seeks to improve and modernise adoption services and systems, and give children a sense of security, continuity, commitment, identity and belonging.
This is in the context of falling numbers of adoption orders and adopters being recruited, including significant regional variations.
The new strategy considers: how to recruit adopters from diverse communities; how to ensure that all those affected by adoption have a voice in the system; helping adopted people to maintain relationships with those important to them; reducing delays in the system; and making sure adopted people and their families get tailored help when they need it.
This includes specific actions for regional adoption agencies – so, as corporate parents, councils might wish to look at these and consider their own practices.
The strategy follows an Ofsted thematic inspection of RAAs that has important findings for councils.
Ofsted reported that day-to-day adoption practice broadly remains strong, with good support for prospective adopters, thorough assessment processes and strong family-finding and matching.
Leadership of RAAs was also stable, with leaders having a good understanding of their agencies’ strengths and weaknesses.
However, the inspection also found that some of the challenges that led to the regionalisation of services remain unresolved. These include difficulties recruiting enough adopters, especially for some groups of children, while some RAAs have struggled to recruit and retain suitably skilled and experienced staff.
There were also challenges in some areas with support services for adoptive families, including difficulty in planning the right support because of the short-term nature of some funding.
Councils will want to particularly consider Ofsted’s findings in relation to governance. The inspection noted that councils relied heavily on self-reporting by RAAs to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of services provided on their behalf. This meant some were unaware of significant shortfalls in the experiences of adopters, children, adopted adults or birth parents.
Where adoption is the right choice for a child who can no longer live with their birth family, it is vital that services are available to meet the needs of everyone involved.
With most councils now operating adoption services through regional arrangements, it is more important than ever that councils have good oversight to ensure the best possible outcomes for children and families.