Increase in ‘adoption parties' on the cards

The government is continuing to plough ahead with its crusade to improve the adoption system.

Proposals published on Christmas Eve include a trial of personal budgets for families requiring adoption support, a plan to encourage “adoption parties” and improved pay and leave arrangements for parents.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education has unveiled an adoption “hotspots” heat map, showing how many children are waiting to be adopted across the country, to encourage potential adopters to come forward.

Although the DfE insists the map “is not a judgment on local authority performance”, some professionals have branded the measure “crude” and a “gimmick” – a criticism also levelled at the concept of adoption parties.

The British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), which has been pioneering the latter approach, has held four adoption activity days over the past 18 months.

Its outgoing chief executive, David Holmes, is acutely aware that adoption parties – or activity days – are contentious.

Positive experiences
He admits the charity was anxious about how the events would work in practice, but says children who have taken part in the days have found them to be a positive experience that helped “demystify” the adoption process.

The initial activity days have resulted in one in five of young attendants meeting their future adoptive parents.

Holmes says this compares with an average 10 per cent success rate achieved through traditional ways of matching families with children. He argues that the government’s endorsement of adoption parties stands a good chance of helping more children to find a permanent home.

“Children can meet adults who may go on to be their adoptive parents. But even if they don’t, it’s about seeing lots of lovely adults who are out there going through the adoptive process and perhaps removing some of the ‘unknowns’ for the children,” he says.

Holmes sits on the policy group that helped the government develop its latest tranche of proposals. He is unsurprisingly broadly supportive of the plans, but says he would like to see ministers place more emphasis on adoption support, aside from trialling the use of personal budgets.

“If there’s going to be an increase in the number of children being adopted, we need to focus hard on adoption support,” he says. “Support needs vary on an individual basis, but we need more therapeutic support and financial support, for example, to build house extensions.”

Nushra Mansuri, professional officer at the British Association of Social Workers, welcomes the government’s move to level the playing field between adoptive and biological parents for maternity and paternity pay and leave.

But she is concerned that the plans are too parent-focused. “It’s really important we are encouraging potentially good adoptive parents to come forward, but the system should be starting from the point of view of the child,” she says. “There is a risk that some of these measures are almost a service for adults.”

Mansuri is also worried that adoption services may not be able to handle the increased demand that plans to boost the use of adoption could create. “It’s all very well to have these measures in place, but you have to be able to cope with the demand,” she says. “Councils and voluntary agencies are under enormous pressure.”
 
She highlights the plan to trial personal budgets as a tricky area to get right. “We’ve seen personal budgets used in social services, particularly adult services, and they may appear to be an attractive idea but it hasn’t always worked out like that,” she says.

Protecting safeguards
Andrew Webb, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, agrees that access to adoption support needs to be improved. He is also unsure if personal budgets are the right mechanism to achieve this.

He warns that the government’s desire to speed up the assessment process must not reduce safeguards for children. “It’s not a bad thing that not all applicants actually become adopters,” he says. “When you talk to adopters, many of them say that they were able to adjust their thinking and get a much better grasp of what it was they were taking on because the process took a while.”

Webb says the government should consider ways to reduce bureaucracy in the adoption system without losing rigour. He suggests introducing “innovative” assessments for applicants, which could see social workers spending intensive periods of time with potential adoptors, by “almost moving in with them”.

Norman Goodwin, chief executive of charity Adoption Matters Northwest, backs the intention behind efforts to improve the adoption system, but, like Webb, fears the heat map is a step in the wrong direction.

Goodwin says the map distorts the truth behind adoption figures and could confuse prospective adopters. “We have to get over to people that the children who are waiting are the nation’s children – they are not the local authorities’ children,” he insists. “It is all of our responsibilities to try and move these child