Emily Frith takes on the role of chief executive at Adoption UK after five years as head of policy and public affairs at the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England.
Previously, she has held roles as director of mental health and rehabilitation at the Education Policy Institute and as special adviser to former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg where she focused on co-ordinating work to improve standards of mental health provision.
Frith has plans to nurture her team's passion for Adoption UK's work and aims to use her knowledge and expertise of both the children's sector and political sphere to ensure the voices of adopted people and their families are heard and are, crucially, “more firmly at the heart” of the charity.
What was it about Adoption UK that attracted you to the role of chief executive?
Adopted children often have a really difficult start in life because of abuse or neglect or because the child has to leave their birth family for some reason, which is a traumatic event in itself.
They need support all the way through their lives and that is something that really appeals to me. It relates to things I’ve done in previous roles around mental health and children's social care.
I really understand some of the challenges adoptive families face and the role really gives me a chance to make a difference through both helping families directly and from a policy and campaigning perspective.
You said when your appointment was announced that you plan to ensure that the needs of adopted children and adults are “more firmly at the heart of the charity's work”. How will you do this?
One of the things I can bring from my role at the children's commissioner's office is my experience of promoting and protecting children's rights, listening to children's voices and making sure they are centred in the work that we do.
We really want to work with adoptive children and adults and adoptive parents to shape the work that we’re going to be doing and co-produce new services in partnership with them through both our support services and campaigning roles.
We want to make sure we are centring their voices in all our work.
What do you consider to be the biggest challenges facing the adoption sector?
There are fewer children being adopted and that is something we need to consider as well as the cost of living and the impact of the war in Ukraine on all charities.
One of the interesting and difficult things the sector is also needing to consider is contact with birth families. With the rise in social media, it's becoming more and more common for a birth family to contact a child or a child to contact a birth family without it being planned, that means it sometimes happens without the support.
I think we need to really look at how we plan contact for adoptive families and modernise that so it's part of the plan from the beginning.
We can do that thinking about how we can support a child to understand their background and consider how they can be in contact with siblings or other family members, where and when that is appropriate so it's not happening in an unplanned and unsupported way.
How will you go about developing that?
There is some really good work going on already in regional adoption agencies and we want to work in partnership with others across the sector and with adoptive people and their families to help modernise the system together.
How would you describe yourself as a leader?
I want to be a leader that is ambitious and visionary, but also that brings my team with me because you’re not a leader if nobody is following you and you’re not a leader if you don’t know what direction you’re going in. I want to get that right.
I want to have authoritativeness, but I also want to really invest in my team, care about what they need and what their goals are while making sure we’re all aligned in what we’re trying to achieve for adopted people and their families. When that happens, everyone brings their passion to work, we all know that we are making a difference and we’re all adding value.
What are your plans for your first month at Adoption UK?
I need to be a doing a lot of listening, I want to get out and visit our services and speak to our members.
There is a conference in my first week so I’ll be speaking at that which is a perfect opportunity to meet our people and other people in the sector – that's my priority in the first few weeks, to really get under the bonnet of the organisation and hear from everyone on what we’re doing well and what more we could do.
Emily Frith CV
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October 2022 onwards: Chief executive, Adoption UK
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2017 – 2022: Head of policy and public affairs, Office of the Children's Commissioner for England
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2015 – 2017: Director of mental health and rehabilitation, Education Policy Institute
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2013 – 2015: Special adviser to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
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2012 – 2013: Policy adviser, Driver Youth Trust
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2012 – 2013: Research associate, Prison Reform Trust
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2006 – 2009: External affairs manager, Turning Point
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2002 – 2006: Health adviser, Liberal Democrats
