Three quarters of councils sign up for regional adoption agencies

A total of 111 councils (73 per cent of all councils in England) have been announced by government as partners in successful regional adoption agency bids.

The largest regional adoption agency will be the London Adoption Board, where all 33 local authorities will link up with 10 voluntary adoption agencies including Action for Children, Adoption Plus, Barnardo’s, and Coram.

The two smallest regional adoption agencies each consist of three local authorities. Medway, Milton Keynes and Brighton & Hove will link up with PACT. While Plymouth, Torbay and Devon will link up with Families for Children and Barnardo's.

The Department for Education said encouraging local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies to join forces will act as "a triple win", by giving agencies a greater pool of approved adopters to improve matching, making vital support services more widely available to adoptive families and better targeting the recruitment of adopters.
 
"The government will provide financial and practical support for councils and adoption agencies to enable them to bring services together regionally, and implement the greatest step change in the way children are matched for adoption in a generation," a DfE spokeswoman said.

"Today’s announcement is evidence of the government’s commitment to reform the adoption system so children waiting are provided with stable and loving homes much more swiftly, giving them the opportunity to settle and bond with their new family," they added.

The DfE said discussions about more projects are currently ongoing and more partnerships could be announced in the coming weeks.

It is offering development support to early adopter sites worth £4.5m in 2015/16.

Plans for regional adoption agencies were included in the Education and Adoption Bill in May’s Queen’s Speech. It sets out plans to force councils to create regional agencies if they haven’t done so voluntarily within two years.