Provisions set out in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 require all councils to be part of an agency by 2020, with the aim of bringing together council and voluntary adoption agency expertise and resources, to help speed up matching between children awaiting adoption and prospective adopters.
But an evaluation of regional adoption agencies, the first of which went live last year, has found a lack of commitment among councils taking part.
"RAAs were experiencing ongoing challenges around securing buy-in and consensus from participating local authorities," states the evaluation, which involved interviews with those involved in RAAs.
This lack of "buy-in" is among councillors, managers and practitioners and in particular where council-run adoption services are already deemed to be performing well.
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