Adoption plan tackles delays in the system

Further measures to improve the care system for looked-after children will be published in the summer, but the proposals set out the first legislative changes that the government intends to implement. Here are the four key points:

1.Tackling delays

The overarching aim of the government’s adoption action plan is to tackle delays in the system.

Guidance already requires local authorities to refer children to the adoption register if no potential family is identified for them within three months of being put forward for adoption.

The government is now considering putting this requirement into primary legislation, as well as a new duty to keep information about children on the register up to date.

The action plan sets out targets for how long the process from entering care to being adopted should take. The target for the "child’s journey" will be 21 months, which will gradually decrease to 14 months over the next four years.

The target for finding children an adoptive family will be seven months initially, moving down to four months over the same period.

Black children on average wait about a year longer to be adopted after entering care than white and Asian children. To reduce delays for this group, the government wants to make finding a perfect or partial ethnic match between children and parents a lower priority than placing them in a loving home.

 2. Adoptive parents

The government is considering creating a "national gateway" to provide a central point of contact for anyone interested in adoption, through a telephone helpline and website.

According to the plan, many prospective adopters find the assessment process "drags on" for longer than the eight months currently set out in the statutory guidance. The government wants to overhaul such assessments by introducing a two-stage training and assessment process, intended to take six months.

The first stage – or pre-qualification phase – will be completed within two months and the second full assessment stage within four. There will be a fast-track process for people who have adopted before, or who are already approved foster carers who wish to adopt a child in their care.

The pre-qualification phase will involve initial preparation. The full assessment stage will consist of more intensive training. Adoption agencies will sign up to assessment agreements with prospective adopters setting out a timetable and what will be involved.

3. Concurrent planning

Concurrent planning is already used in several local authorities to provide stability for children who may go on to be adopted. Under the approach, prospective adopters are also approved as foster carers, so that they can start looking after children as soon as they enter care.

The local authority works to support birth parents and to see if the child can be returned home while the child is being fostered. If a return is not possible, the carers adopt the child.

The government wants the principles behind concurrent planning to be used more widely for all children, not just infants. Changes to the law will emphasise the importance of councils working with family-finding teams as early as possible to identify potential permanent carers for children, who may go on to adopt.
Several London authorities already use concurrent planning in partner­ship with Coram. It is also being introduced in Cambridgeshire.

4. Performance management

The action plan concedes that government wants to avoid managing the performance of local authorities from the centre, but argues that targets are sometimes needed to make sure that adequate services are provided to the most vulnerable, including looked-after children.

Because government believes the current inspection and accountability frameworks are not working for adoption, it plans to publish new annual adoption scorecards for every local authority in the coming weeks.

The scorecards will highlight three key indicators. The first will measure the average time it takes for a child identified for adoption to actually move in with their new family; the second will look at the proportion of children who wait longer for adoption than they should; and the third will measure the average time it takes to match a child to an adoptive family.

The scorecards will also include additional information on the timeliness of the local family justice system, and the numbers of older children being adopted, to give a rounded picture of a local authority’s performance.

EXPERT VIEW

Norman Goodwin, chief executive, Adoption Matters Northwest, and member of the government’s working group on adoption

"It is not acceptable that so many children and young people wait so long to be adopted. Older children, boys, children in sibling groups and those with disabilities and medical issues are historically more difficult to place.

"The Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies is reporting a 33 per cent increase in the number of applicants to adopt in the past nine months, but there are still far too few people who are coming forward to adopt.

"At Adoption Matters, we have been tracking how long it takes us from the application stage to matching parents with a child. On average, we’re doing that in nine months.

"For some prospective adopters, the assessment process is going to take longer than the six months that government is suggesting, which the action plan does concede. It’s an ambitious target.

"There are also some prospective adopters who don’t want the process speeded up. We are preparing people for an extremely complex task and taking appropriate safeguarding measures.
The action plan talks about increasing the use of concurrent planning. This will be the best solution for some children.

"One potential issue is that prospective adopters could be devastated if they were looking after a child and the decision was made that they couldn’t adopt. I don’t think it’s a panacea to all our problems, but neither are wider changes in legislation.

"It’s good that local authorities will be accountable on how long it takes them to place children. Voluntary adoption agencies would be positive about being involved in the scorecard system, perhaps
completing a part of the scorecard to show how long it takes us to meet the relevant targets."