Agenda item

Report of Interim Strategic Director, Care Wellbeing and Learning

The Committee received a report summarising the activity of the Adoption Service for the year ending March 2016 with particular reference to proposed developments in adoption.

The Committee received the most recent annual report produced by the Service covering the year April 2015 – March 2016. The report April 2016 – March 2017 is due to be completed in early summer 2017.

The 2015/16 annual report provides details of the numbers of children successfully adopted during that period with an accompanying breakdown in terms of age and gender. There was an increase in the number of children matched to their adopters in comparison to the previous year, with a high proportion of children being recruited and assessed by Gateshead Adoption Team.

For the current year, April 2016 to the time of writing the committee report, 17 children have been successfully adopted with adoption hearings pending for a further four children. A further 14 children are also placed with their adoptive families awaiting adoption and the Service is currently family finding for 10 children.

The annual report for 2015/16 highlights some of the factors that had a bearing on both family finding and adopter recruitment during that year, such as the reduction in the number of Placement Orders for adoption that were granted by the courts.

The Service has been fairly consistent with regard to the number of enquiries in relation to adoption that is has attracted and an analysis of the figures from the past four years suggests that the ability to attract enquiries from prospective adopters form the whole of the north-east region has been maintained.

The report also includes several positive comments from the recent Ofsted report of March 2016 in relation to various aspects of the adoption process and the support provided by the Service to adoptive families, both before and after the granting of the Adoption Order.

Feedback from adopters at various stages of the process continues to be positive. The level of adoption placement breakdowns of children placed by the Service continues to be extremely low, a rate of no more than one a year, and usually involving children with very complex needs and challenging behaviours.

Requests for adoption support from families continue to increase, partly as a reflection of the more complex needs and backgrounds of children being place for adoption and increased public awareness of new initiatives such as the national Adoption Support Fund.

At the time of preparation of this report the pressure and demand on the Adoption Support Fund has been so great that a ‘cap’ of £5,000 per child/family has recently been introduced with local authorities expected to meet the costs for anything over this level or to match fund.

The 2015/16 report draws attention to some of the proposed changes for the way adoption services could be delivered in the future. The publication in January 2016 of the Department for Education document ‘Vision for Change’ outlines an expectation for local authorities to move to a system by 2020 whereby adopter recruitment, matching and support will be delivered on a regional basis by a single organisation. Local authorities were also expected to demonstrate that they had plans in place by 2017 to evidence that locally they are working constructively towards achieving such an outcome.

In the north-east region, five local authorities (Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton) and all the local voluntary agencies in the region have combined to set up a Regional Adoption Agency project Group (Tees Valley). This group has already undertaken some initial scoping and consultation and hopes to have an established Regional Adoption Agency for the Tees Valley area up and running at the earliest by the autumn of 2017.

The five local authorities of Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland and South Tyneside in conjunction with all the existing voluntary agencies in the region (ARC Adoption NE; After Adoption; Barnardos; and Durham Family Welfare) have also expressed an interest in working collaboratively together as a project group for the north of the region.

Newcastle Council is the lead agency and is currently in the process of undertaking initial work in relation to the viability if establishing a Regional Adoption Agency – Adopt North East. A board which includes Senior Officers from each of the local authorities and voluntary agencies has been established to oversee the work of the project and further updates will be made available as the group develops.

RESOLVED - that the information be noted and the implications for the service of                        future proposals to changes in the service delivery also be noted.