Fostering for adoption should be expanded, say Lords

Members of the Lords committee scrutinising proposals in the forthcoming Children and Families Bill warned that government plans on fostering for adoption do not go far enough.

Fostering for adoption is intended to encourage councils to place children with foster carers who can eventually go on to adopt them if necessary.

But committee members said the approach should be used more widely than the government’s proposals suggest, and that a duty should be placed on councils to consider fostering for adoption placements for all looked-after children where adoption is the plan.

Committee chair Baroness Butler-Sloss described the government’s current proposals on fostering for adoption as a “missed opportunity”.

She said: “If local authorities had a statutory duty to consider a fostering for adoption placement for all children for whom adoption is the plan, it would allow many more children to be placed in their permanent homes much sooner.

“This is vital since there is a wealth of evidence that delay in finding a permanent home and movements between short-term foster placements can significantly damage a child’s wellbeing.”

Government plans to relax requirements on matching children with adoptive parents of the same ethnicity were also criticised by committee members.

Baroness Butler-Sloss said: “We have not been convinced that this process causes significant delay and we are concerned that to remove the requirement entirely might send a message to those working in the field that these issues do not matter, when clearly they are all components of a child’s identity.

“We believe that race, religion, culture and language should continue to be taken into account when placing children in new homes.”

Robert Tapsfield, chief executive of the Fostering Network, said the charity is also concerned about the government’s fostering for adoption proposals. But he argued that the approach should only be used with a small proportion of children.

“We feel that fostering for adoption will be helpful in better meeting the needs of a relatively small number of young looked-after children with an adoption plan, by enabling them to settle into permanent families earlier,” he said.

“Anyone entering into a fostering for adoption arrangement will have to be prepared to be a foster carer. This may mean supporting the child having regular contact with their birth parents, and accepting that there may be a change in the care plan for the child, meaning that they go to an alternative placement or a return home rather than to an adoptive family.”

Other recommendations made by the committee ahead of the introduction of the bill early next year include suggestions to make sure that social workers consider whether reconciliation with a child’s birth family is possible at the an earlier stage.

The Lords also want to see adoption considered as an option one month after a child enters care.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said government would respond to the committee’s report shortly.

“We are overhauling the adoption system to get more children out of care and into loving, stable, family homes where adoption is the plan for them,” she said.