Fears adoption reforms will cause delays
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Government plans to introduce regional adoption agencies could result in it taking longer to place children with complex needs, it has been claimed.
Under plans announced last month, councils will be forced to merge or outsource their adoption services into regional agencies unless they do it under their own steam within two years.
It is hoped the creation of "regional adoption agencies" will give councils a greater pool of approved adopters to match children with, meaning they can be found a home more quickly.
But social enterprise Adoption Link, which works on behalf of local authorities to match children with registered adopters, has warned that the opposite could be true.
Evidence submitted by Adoption Link to the Education and Adoption Bill Committee, which is meeting today, states that: "While an increase in the scale of adoption agencies may result in some children being matched more effectively, research indicates that children with complex needs may actually wait longer.
“These children are more likely to require a search beyond their own region for a suitable placement, and barriers to interagency matching, and a sense of ‘self-sufficiency’ in larger agencies, may together make the situation for these children worse.”
The submission goes on to call for action to be taken to tackle current barriers to interagency matching – such as the interagency fee, variation in practice and policy, and sharing of adopters.
“The problems will not be wholly solved by increasing agency size, and could be solved in other ways," it states.
The submission also flags up the potential impact of regional agencies on the choices available to adopters.
It states that, at the point of considering adoption, most adopters will have a choice of agencies and can choose the one that best meets their needs.
“It is important for adopters to also have the option of changing agency if the relationship with a social worker or manager breaks down,” it adds.
“Regional agencies would reduce, or for many adopters remove, this choice.
“This should be one of the considerations in deciding the scale of any merger, and an alternative route should be provided for adopters who have problems with their agency that cannot be resolved internally.”
