Councils fail to make use of voluntary adoption agencies

A report on adoption services in England by think-tank Policy Exchange has found that some local authorities put off using voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs) for financial reasons.

VAAs specialise in finding adoptive parents for children who local authorities have historically had difficulty in placing, such as children over the age of four, children from an ethnic minority group or those who are part of a sibling group.

Policy Exchange researchers claim the main reason for the decline in use of VAAs is a misconception about the true cost of using them to successfully place a child. 

The annual cost of funding a child in foster care is £25,000, while there is a one-off cost of £24,080 to successfully place a child through a VAA.

Policy Exchange claims that, because budgets tend to be run on an annual basis, the additional up-front cost is deemed prohibitive with anecdotal evidence suggesting that some authorities have even left a child in foster care until the beginning of the next financial year rather than use a VAA placement due to the impact on their annual budget.

Statistics collated for the report found that two-thirds of VAAs have reported a decrease in services purchased by local authorities and 40 per cent of VAAs say that their future financial viability is in jeopardy.

James Groves, researcher at Policy Exchange, said: "While foster care can provide stability in a child's life it is surely better that a long-term outcome involving adoptive parents is found as quickly as possible for any young person in care.

"That some local authorities are not making better use of voluntary adoption agencies, who have a proven track record of finding families for hard-to-place children, is difficult to comprehend."

A Lcoal Government Association spokesman strongly denied the charge that councils put cost first. "This description of how councils supposedly approach the adoption process will be unrecognisable to anyone with a true understanding of the system," he said.

He added: "To suggest councils put the interests of balancing the books in a single year ahead of finding a good home for a vulnerable child is an insult to the hard work done by dedicated staff within councils' adoption and fostering departments every single day."