Reform adopter

The government's emphasis on improving the adoption system has certainly proved divisive in the children and young people's sector.

While many support the ongoing reforms, others fear a sole focus on adoption devalues other forms of permanent care for children, and could jeopardise work aimed at keeping at-risk birth families together.

Srabani Sen, the new chief executive of the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), is firmly in the former category. Indeed, she cites the "dynamic reform agenda" as one of the key factors that led to her applying for her new role, having previously led the charity Contact a Family since 2008. Asked if the government is right to place so much focus on adoption, she says the reforms, which include attempts to reduce delay and recruit more adopters, provide a "fabulous opportunity for the sector". When CYP Now visits BAAF's offices in central London, Sen is in her first week in the job, having been appointed in September. Although she professes to be getting up to speed with the finer points of her policy brief, she is able to set out the areas she wants to work on initially. One of these is adopter recruitment.

Adopter recruitment

Latest Ofsted data shows that of the 10,177 children subject to an adoption plan, 4,682 are still waiting to be matched to adoptive families.

"I find it quite distressing that there are children who need a stable family home for whom adoption has been decided is the best route for that child, yet are waiting for so long to find the right family," she says.

"There's a moral imperative to get that sorted and to work to change that picture so that children for whom adoption is clearly the right solution are then matched and placed with families as soon as possible.

"What we don't want to do is move so quickly that we are setting those families up to fail, but equally it cannot be right that kids are having to wait so long when it is clear that adoption is the right solution for them."

The Department for Education's own research suggests that more than 650,000 people would consider adopting at some point, but may be put off by misconceptions about the process, including a lack of support. In an attempt to remedy the situation, the government has taken a series of measures to boost adopter recruitment. This includes taking £150m from the Early Intervention Grant in 2013/14 to plough into attempts to increase the number of adoptions in England.

The cash was handed to councils in the form of a one-year "adoption reform grant", of which £50m was ringfenced to "incentivise" local authorities to find more adopters. Local authorities were expected to spend the remaining £100m supporting adoption reform, addressing their highest priority needs, such as the major backlog of children waiting for adoption. The funding was announced as a one-year deal, but there is a growing clamour within the sector for it to be continued. Sen is unequivocal that financial support for councils must continue or any progress that has been made will be in jeopardy.

"If you are implementing such fundamental reform, it's not a one-off activity," she says. "It is not that you flip a switch and everything has changed, there is a process that has to happen to embed system reform and also to be able to learn from what's happening.

"In order for progress to continue, you have to be constantly evaluating and learning and making improvements on what has gone before, both in terms of implementing changes now and making sure we keep the momentum going. I find it difficult to see how that is achievable and how we are to meet the government's long-term aims unless we support the implementation of that reform. It doesn't just happen by magic."

She is also not convinced that the controversial Clause 3 of the Children and Families Bill, which could result in the removal of adoption powers from local authorities that are deemed to be performing poorly in recruiting prospective adopters and handing it to voluntary adoption agencies, is a solution.

The government has this month compromised on the powers through an amendment to the bill that will mean the Secretary of State will need the approval of parliament before going ahead with such a move.

"In absolutely anything in professional life, evidence is the key, so in making any kind of decision around clause 3, I would want to be satisfied the government is using the right evidence to inform any decisions they are making, not conflating issues that the local authority may not be in control of," she says.

"It is crucial any decision is not ideologically driven - it is driven by the needs of the kids in that area. Simply shifting that responsibility from one organisation to another, in and of itself, will not lead to better outcomes for children."

Adoption support

Part of the £150m given to councils was also intended to fund the specialist support children need. This was supplemented by the announcement in September that adoptive parents will be able to access a fund worth £19.3m to get help for things such as therapy for children who may have been abused or neglected.

The Adoption Support Fund will pay for therapeutic services such as cognitive therapy, play and music therapy, and intensive family support to try and help adopted children recover from previous experiences. It is hoped the move will result in fewer adoptions breaking down.

Sen says BAAF is keen to ensure that support works well, likening the system to the special educational needs (SEN) reforms that are introducing personal budgets for children with SEN. But those reforms are facing their own challenges, with children's minister Edward Timpson having already admitted that pathfinder sites trialling the system have found the process "challenging".

Sen, who has previous experience of the SEN reforms from her time with Contact a Family, says it is essential that councils get the right systems in place.

"In relation to the SEN reforms, the government was regularly saying to the public sector and voluntary sector 'don't worry, everything will be sorted via the development of those pathfinders'.

"But the learning from those pathfinders was not shared in a consistent and timely way to enable the sector to catch up.

"I think how we get the learning out there is being addressed now, but actually that should have been built in from the start.

"If you are implementing fundamental system change, you have to have a really clear picture of where you are going, why you think you should be going there and map out in very clear terms the steps you need to take to get you there. You need to communicate that to everyone to make that change a success.

Learning from experience

"Unless you do that in a very planned way, you end up in all sorts of difficulties along the way and I think it's crucial we learn from some of the things that have gone well with the pathfinder programme, but also some of the things that didn't go well.

"The sector that I have come from is a little bit further down the line in terms of thinking how you give people genuine choice and control over personal budgets, so hopefully I'll be able to bring some of that thinking from the SEN sector into the adoption sector."

While the political emphasis on adoption will keep it firmly at the top of policymakers' priorities, Sen is also keen to ensure foster care is not overlooked. She points to the fact that numbers of children in foster care are far higher.

Latest statistics published by the Department for Education this month show that of the 68,110 looked-after children as of 31 March 2013, 50,900 (74.7 per cent) were in foster care.

"Proportionately, the vast majority of kids are in foster care or other forms of care apart from adoption, and that may well be the right choice for them," she says.

"So there is something about taking away that slight Cinderella feel about foster care. It matters just as much that we get that system right as it does that we get the adoption system right."

SRABANI SEN CV

• Sen was chief executive of Contact a Family from 2008 until November 2013
• She is a board member of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and the Every Disabled Child Matters alliance
• She is a member of the co-ordinating committee of the End Child Poverty campaign and was recently a commissioner on the Big Society Commission
• Prior to joining Contact a Family, Sen was chief executive of Alcohol Concern, which followed a period as director of nations, regions and campaigning at Diabetes UK