This is despite latest figures from the Department for Education showing that the number of children successfully adopted in the year to 31 March 2020 dropped by four per cent compared with the previous year while overall adoption figures dropped by a third between 2015 and 2020.
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Speaking to the the House of Lords Select Committee on the Children and Families Act 2014 as part of their examination of “critical issues in the English adoption system”, Elaine Farmer, professor of child and families studies at the University of Bristol said: “I gather that practitioners say they are not recruiting suitable adopters for the children that are available at the moment but when you talk to approved adopters, those that are single, black or older people say they are not being selected and children are not being placed with them.”
She added that the “passing over” of certain groups of approved adopters had been an issue for more than a decade.
“We did a study that came out in 2010 which found that single adopters were passed over and this could mean that children did not get an adoptive placement and then end up in long-term foster care with single foster carers,” Farmer added.
The comments will feed into an ongoing investigation by peers around whether the Children and Families Act 2014 is fit for purpose.
The evidence session also saw sector leaders brand kinship carers as “really marginalised”.
Farmer said that “the biggest challenge facing kinship care is its invisibility and lack of recognition by government”.
“I think this means it has been neglected leaving many kinship carers bringing up children with little or no help from the state,” she added.
Lucky Peake, chief executive of charity Kinship, told peers that had the 2014 Act been published today the charity would push for a legislative framework to support kinship carers and children in their care.
“We would make sure there was greater parity for these children who are the same, they may go into foster care, or adoption or kinship care but we are really disadvantaging one group of children,” she said.
An online call for evidence on the 2014 Act to feed into the Lords’ inquiry is open until Monday 25 April 2022.
