Panel members at a meeting on adopter recruitment at the annual National Children and Adult Services conference said that despite a government focus on adoption, its moratorium on marketing spend was a missed opportunity.
Hugh Thornbery, chief executive of Adoption UK, said statistics published by the National Recruitment Forum on fostering and adoption show the types of people most likely to foster and adopt.
"But there is a freeze on marketing spend in government,” he said. “Most marketing work is done by social workers doing little bits here and there.
“We have a very good understanding of where we want to target recruitment activity. We know who is doing it well and some money needs to be spent on it.
“If this is a matter of priority, there needs to be some leadership and promotion from government as well as at a local level.”
His view was backed by Andrew Webb, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, who said that although the number of children being adopted is up, the rise is outstripped by increases in numbers of children waiting to be adopted.
He pointed to good work going on at local authority level, with some areas forming local consortia to develop approaches to get better value from marketing.
He said that while local government was in a good place to run targeted campaigns based on local profiles, there is still a role for national government.
“High-level background awareness is most efficiently done at a national level,” he said.
Mark Owers, director of the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, added that marketing spend must be “targeted more effectively” than is currently the case.
The government has identified improving adoption services as a key priority. In January, the government announced £150m for local authorities to invest in adoption – cash that had been previously taken out of the amount of early intervention funding handed to councils.
And last month, the government announced a £19.3m fund for adoptive parents to get help such as therapy for children who may have been abused or neglected.
