Children and Families Act: Adoption

What is happening?

The Children and Families Act has ushered in a raft of changes to the adoption system, placing into law elements of the government's action plan on adoption designed to get more children adopted with less delay. These are:

Who does it affect?

The changes will mainly affect local authorities in terms of their requirement to provide information and support to adoptive parents, and the way they place children. Courts will also have a greater role to play in deciding who adopted children should be able to see.

Implications for practice

The introduction of personal budgets will have major implications for practice.

Although the legislation governing them will not come into effect until April 2015, Hugh Thornbery, chief executive of Adoption UK, says authorities will need to prepare for the changes in advance.

The new measures will mean that adoptive parents will get to choose how they spend support money passed to them directly by local authorities.

Trials of the new arrangements will see 10 local authorities use a new assessment tool to better identify the needs of young people who have been adopted.

"That has significant practice implications for the adoption social work workforce and those working in child and adolescent mental health services in order to conduct an integrated assessment that is able to pick up on quite complex conditions," Thornbery says.

"One of the things we are aware of is very often it is the case that the conditions that adopted children experience can be misdiagnosed, because they are often multiple and complex.

"Sometimes the type of support provided is not the right type of therapeutic support. The quality of the assessment is critical."

Thornbery says there is also a broader workforce issue around understanding the impact early childhood trauma has on children, and how it affects them as they grow up.

"From surveys we have done, the feedback is that when adopters ask for help, there is not full recognition given to the child's start in life," he says.

"There is almost an issue of social workers thinking that if the child is exhibiting difficulties in the teenage years, it is probably as a result of their adoptive parents' failure to parent well. But it can be the effects of abuse in early life.

"Adoptive parents sometimes hold off asking for help until a late stage because it is seen more as a child protection issue than an adoption support issue."

The duty to inform adopters of their entitlement to assessment and support will also have implications for authorities in terms of the way they communicate with and provide information to adoptive parents and prospective adopters. Currently, authorities only have to provide information if requested.

Thornbery says research by his organisation found that 50 per cent of adopters were not aware of their right to an assessment for support.

Unresolved issues

The main unresolved issue is how the introduction of personal budgets for adoption support will fare. Plans to implement similar personal budgets for children with special educational needs have already been delayed, with the trials flagging up a number of issues around re-writing materials, retraining staff and putting new systems in place.

The trials also found that there was an issue over whether parents who choose to buy therapy services would end up paying more than local authorities.

"There are a number of unanswered questions on personal budgets that we need time to work through," Thornbery says.

It is also unclear to what extent the government intends to make use of powers to strip local authorities of their role in the adoption process if they fail to deliver results.

Following opposition to the plans, the government amended the Children and Families Bill, so that the Education Secretary will need the approval of both houses of parliament to strip all local authorities of their powers.

However, this consent will not be required if the decision is taken to strip "one or more" named authorities of their powers.