Adoption Leadership Board publishes new report on adoption in England

12 April 2017

A new paper published by the Consortium for Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA) on behalf of the The Adoption Leadership Board (ALB) assesses recent trends in adoption and permanency decision-making.

Andrew Christie, Chair of the Adoption Leadership Board, said: “This paper looks at the recent trends in adoption and highlights some significant differences in the number of decisions for adoption in different areas of the country. This suggests there may be different approaches to planning and decision making for children in different parts of the country. More needs to be done to understand why, in some parts of the country, adoption seems to have been ruled out as an option for children where previously this would have been considered along with other options.”

Data collected by the ALB suggests that, although the recent fall in decisions for adoption and placement orders seems to have stopped, there is a high degree of variation in decision-making at a local and regional level. Some areas have seen a fall in adoption decisions of over 50% while others show a significant increase.

The paper also reports that 580 children with placement orders have been waiting for 18 months or more since entering care. This reinforces the fact that there remains an urgent need to find suitable adopters to care for children traditionally deeemed “harder to place” or “priority children” i.e. those with complex health needs or disabilities, children from minority ethnic, cultural, religious and language backgrounds, “older children” and sibling groups.

You can read the paper at the CVAA website here

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