Behind the Inspection Rating: Ealing praised for adoption work

Ealing has racked up outstanding grades on every aspect of its adoption work, with Ofsted’s inspectors praising the authority’s commitment to equality and its ability to find families for every child within 12 months of the decision that they should be adopted.

The council’s post-adoption support, which Ofsted found to be “exceptionally good”, also received repeated mentions.

“It always felt odd to me that foster carers get so much support to provide care, but adopters adopt the child and then can feel very much on their own,” says Carolyn Fair, operations manager for children’s placement services at Ealing. “There are cases where adopters feel a little abandoned once the adoption order has gone through. We work to make sure we don’t do that.”

The focus, she explains, is on helping people with the challenges of being an adoptive parent. “My experience is that adopters aren’t particularly interested in financial support. But what they do want is that when their child reaches their adolescent years, they are able to come back to the post-adoption team and say they’re really struggling and then get support.”

Offering that long-term access to help is crucial, Fair says, because the problems children may have experienced before adoption often do not manifest themselves until the young people reach their teens. Making it clear to families that help is available even years after the adoption takes place brings benefits at every stage of the process.

“People come to adoption services very much through word of mouth. They will know people who have gone through it and people pick up from them where the best places to go are, and they will go there to be assessed,” says Fair. “Knowing from the very beginning that they won’t be left on their own with a child who has had a traumatic history is one of the biggest keys to the success of any adoption agency.”

Another pivotal piece in Ealing’s jigsaw of support is the adoption service’s looked-after children psychologist, who Ofsted found to “provide a very high quality service”. The psychologist works with children and families at every stage of the adoption process, including training adopters on how to handle particular behaviours, preparing children for moving into an adoptive family or familiarising children with the family’s life history.

The psychologist’s work also helps prevent adoption breakdowns, says Fair. “We strive for consistency and to keep placement disruptions to a minimum because children who get bounced around just don’t do very well. In the seven years the psychologist has been here, we’ve seen great progress on placement stability because carers feel better able to cope.

“If you get the move from fostering to adoption wrong, it can be very damaging and she has prepared the adopters and children for this – if you get that right, it’s half the battle won.”

While this emphasis on support has helped Ealing become an outstanding adoption service, the council is not stopping there. It already has plans under way to help adopted children do better in school, including work to help teachers better understand the needs of their adopted students and extending the right of looked-after children to go to their first choice school to adopted children from September 2013.


Helpful Hints

Target specific groups. Ealing runs recruitment campaigns designed to attract adopters from different communities, including its Pink campaign to encourage applications from gay, lesbian and bi-sexual adopters. “Since the campaign, we’ve become quite well known among the gay community,” says Fair. “We have Stonewall recognition and we’re members of New Family Social, which is a social networking group for gay and lesbian adopters and foster carers. It’s enabled us to look at this pool of people who have a lot to offer and helps us place more children. It’s about making sure you get the message out that we want people from all walks of life.”

Get top-level support. Active and visible support from senior directors helps to keep staff motivated, says Fair. “We get high-level support from both Judith Finlay, our director of children and family services, and our chief executive Martin Smith. He makes it clear he has an active interest in the work of the staff and supports us. He has done walk-arounds and congratulates them publicly about their achievements. All the workers know Judith well and can talk to her too. I think that makes a difference to the people on the ground.”


Fact File

Location Ealing, west London
Description Ealing Council’s adoption service oversees adoption placements and adopter approval in the west London borough. Ealing is London’s third largest borough with 320,000 residents. The local authority consists of seven areas: Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall. Each social worker on the adoption team has a caseload of 20 to 25 children at any one time.
Children The council is seeking families for 100 to 120 children at any one time and 19 adopters were approved in 2011.
Ofsted inspection unique reference number SC055023