Government to consider changing law to address fall in number of adoptions

The Government is actively considering changes to adoption law “so that where adoption is the right thing for children, social workers and courts pursue this”, the Prime Minister has said.

David Cameron said the proposals would “make sure decisions are being made in the child’s best interests”.

Number 10 noted that over the last two years, the number of decisions for adoption being made by the courts had fallen by up to 50%.

Last year the President of the Family Division acknowledged the tension between Government guidance on adoption and recent rulings by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.

In the case of Re B, the Supreme Court set out that orders contemplating non-consensual adoption were “a very extreme thing, a last resort”, only to be made where “nothing else will do”.

Local authorities have however struggled to reconcile this approach with revised statutory guidance on adoption published by the Department for Education in 2013.

This said that the local authorities that were most successful in finding adoptive families for looked after children “will generally be those with a very clear care planning process that always considers adoption as a possible permanence option and not an option of last resort”.

The suggestion that adoption law could be changed was part of a package of measures announced by the PM this week and intended to increase the number of children adopted and speed up the process.

These include:

• New measures to double the number of children placed with their adoptive family early – “halving the time they spend in care waiting to move into their new home”. Councils will be required to reveal how many children they place with adoptive families before the full process is complete. Currently around 10% of adopted children are placed with families early;
• Children being placed with relatives who are most able to look after them, “and not distant unsuitable relations they have never met". The Government will change regulations so councils have to carry out more thorough assessments. “The evidence shows that Special Guardianship Orders are more likely to break down where the child is being sent to live with a relative they have never met, or do not have a strong bond with,” Number 10 said;
• Merging all council adoption services into regional bodies “so children can be matched with parents more quickly”. This will be achieved through the Education and Adoption Bill. Some 140 out of 150 councils have applied to merge and streamline their services, the Government said, adding that the whole system should be in regional adoption agencies by 2020.

David Cameron said: “It is a tragedy that there are still too many children waiting to be placed with a loving family – we have made real progress but it remains a problem.

“As Prime Minister I want to make sure that we do everything we can so children are placed in a loving home as soon as possible, giving them the best chance for a happy and fulfilled life.”