Adoptions on fast track to success

With the government pushing for faster adoptions, it is hard not to see Lincolnshire as a model service.

In 2010/11, it found families for 92 per cent of children waiting for adoption within 12 months; in fact, most of them were found within just six. It is a performance that helped secure an outstanding grade in its most recent Ofsted inspection.

But speed has not come at the expense of quality. As the inspectorate noted: “Children enjoy outstanding developmental outcomes with quick progress to successful placements with their adoptive parents.”

One important factor in this success is the county’s adoption panel, which Ofsted described as “a highly effective safeguarding mechanism”.

Robust scrutiny
Tara Jones, Lincolnshire’s head of regulated services for adoption, says: “Social workers go to the panel fully appreciating that its role is to scrutinise adoption plans and the reports being submitted, so that children are offered the maximum opportunity to develop,” she says.

Social workers see the benefit of such robust scrutiny, adds Jones. “Social workers have told us that it is helpful for understanding the decisions and what is expected and that has raised the quality of our child permanence reports and adoption assessments.”

The adoption service helps grease the wheels of the adoption process by encouraging potential adopters to become approved foster carers. This means that children can be placed with their potential family while an adoption order is sought. “We’ve embraced concurrent placements because that enables us to place them soon after they enter care,” says Jones. “It means minimal disruption to the child and reduces delays.”

However, this does require making sure those seeking to adopt know what to expect. “There is a risk that the parent could change their mind so we have to work with adopters so that they know there are risks to being dual-approved, but we’ve been particularly successful in 2010/11 in getting adopters to agree to this,” Jones says.

The service also emphasises the benefits of adoption, by getting adopters and foster carers on training courses to share their experiences. “They can put issues into perspective and give the positive side of caring for these children,” says Jones.

Those seeking to adopt are given access to Opt2Adopt, a password-protected website containing information, e-learning courses and a discussion forum where adopters can share their experiences and chat.

Finally, when a placement is found for a child the service encourages the adoptive family to continue the activities that the council’s fostering service fund for the child. “We’ve made a commitment in Lincolnshire to fund an extra-curricular activity such as horse riding or drama for the vast majority of children who are in foster care,” says Jones. “The inspector was impressed at the amount of children that continued with these hobbies once they were in their adoptive placements. It’s very important to say that this child has this hobby, that the child’s self-esteem has grown from this and that they have made friends through it.”