Written evidence from Adoption UK (CFA0068)

HOUSE OF LORDS CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ACT 2014 SELECT COMMITTEE INQURY

Adoption UK welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Select Committee on the Children and Families Act 2014 as part of its post-legislative scrutiny inquiry.

About Adoption UK and why we are responding

1.              Adoption UK is the leading charity providing support, community and advocacy for adopted people and those parenting children who cannot live with their birth parents. We connect people, provide support and training and campaign for improvements to adoption policy and practice. With a national membership of over 6,000 Adoption UK is the largest voice of adopters in the UK.

2.              Improving adoption in England is a manifesto commitment of the current UK government and there have been significant efforts to make changes to the system, including via the introduction of Regional Adoption Agencies (RAA’s), the Adoption Support Fund (ASF) as well as government strategies setting out plans to tackle existing challenges[1]. Legislation and guidance have sought to address some of the problems around post adoption support, matching and recruitment.

3.              Despite efforts, over the last four successive years of surveying adopters for Adoption UK’s Adoption Barometer – around three quarters of family’s report facing a continual struggle for support, despite it now being widely accepted that providing timely adoption support can dramatically improve adopted children’s long term life chances.

4.              The backdrop is a rising number of children entering care and a fall in permanence orders (adoption and special guardianship).[2] Worryingly, children who already have a best interest decision are waiting longer for permanence, despite delay causing lasting harm to vulnerable children.[3]

5.              Adoption UK is responding to this Inquiry as the leading organisation representing adopters in the UK. The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced several important changes to the adoption and SEN systems, but our research demonstrates that this has not been enough, and families are still struggling.

6.              Every year, around 4,000 children in the UK are placed in permanent adoptive families. There is a common misconception that once adopted, the trauma these children have experienced ends, but it does not. Adopted children spend an average of 15 months in care, often moving through several foster families, losing everything that is familiar to them along the way. 71% of adopted children have suffered significant trauma and neglect[4]. They are much more likely than their peers to have neurological disorders such as Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Autistic Spectrum Disorder and are at elevated risk of several psychiatric disorders. Adopted young people are more than twice as likely as their peers not to be in employment, education, or training, more than twice as likely to seek help with their mental health and are over-represented in the criminal justice system.[5]

Executive Summary

7.              The Act sought to speed up the adoption process, however today children with a best interest decision are waiting longer for permanence. The number of children moving into and through the adoption process continues to decline, because of a decrease in the number of best interest decisions being made.

8.              The Act introduced a requirement for Local Authorities to consider placing children with a foster carer who is also a prospective adopter (“concurrent planning”), however Adoption UK research shows adopters face problems pursuing fostering for adoption.

9.              The Act sought to reduce delay by removing the explicit legal wording around a child’s ethnicity, although data shows a disproportionate number of children from ethnic minority backgrounds waiting over 18 months for a placement, with black boys waiting the longest.

10.         The Act sought to improve the recruitment and matching part of the adoption process by requiring local authorities to recruit adopters from agencies in other areas, and by giving adopters access to Link Maker. However, a decline in adoption decisions and placement orders means there are now more adopter families waiting than children waiting with a Placement Order. However, fewer children are being matched and placed with adoptive parents, and a greater proportion of children are waiting longer – particularly those with Hard to Place characteristics.

11.         The Act sought to improve support by placing new duties on local authorities to provide personal budgets upon request. Financial support plans are intended to be part of Adoption Support Plans, but Adoption UK research shows that 62% of new adoptive families recently surveyed do not have a written plan for post adoption support.

12.         The Act requires local authorities to provide information on entitlements to support, however provision is down to the discretion of local authorities, which is in turn dependent on local authority budgets and the availability of services locally. The postcode lottery of support is widely acknowledged and RAAs are tasked with developing national standards to address this, although without a legal duty to deliver and monitor, it is difficult to see how national standards will be enforced.

13.         The Act aims to reduce the disruption caused by inappropriate contact through changes to contact arrangements. There is considerable evidence that arrangements for indirect contact between adopted children and young people and birth relatives are not effective in practice for the large proportion of adopted children. Adopter’s perceptions of the quality of the support they receive for direct or indirect contact are low and the systems for establishing and maintaining contact – direct and indirect – require a complete overhaul, including Letterbox.

14.         The Act extended entitlements so that children in care going straight through to adoption have access to priority school admissions, the pupil premiums, and are eligible for free early education for 2-year-olds. Priority school admission is a helpful initiative for adoptive families; however, priority school admissions only have full effect during the normal admissions round in YR or Y7. At all other times, priority admissions will realistically result in adopted children being placed at or near the top of a waiting list.

15.         Adoptive parents’ perceptions of the impact of pupil premium funding for previously looked after children (post-LAC PP+) indicate that this initiative is not achieving the hoped-for outcomes, and there is little formal monitoring of the use of post-LAC PP+ with which to measure its effectiveness.

16.         The Act’s introduction of a 26-week time limit on care proceedings can be inappropriate where previously looked after children re-enter the care system in circumstances where their parents or carers are not deemed to pose a risk, but where the support available to the family is not sufficient to maintain a safe home for the child, any siblings and the adults involved. In these cases, it is essential that there is time to assess the situation and put a package of therapeutic support in place to offer the best chance of family reunification or rebuilding of relationships.

17.         The Act introduced significant changes to the SEND system, including the introduction of the Education, Health, and Care (EHC) Plan. Department for Education (DfE) statistics demonstrate that looked after children are more likely to have SEND, especially social, emotional, and mental health needs (SEMH) and successive Adoption Barometer reports indicate that this is also true of adopted children.

18.         Adoption UK evidence suggests considerable drift and delay in identifying, assessing and providing support for children’s SEND. There are concerns that SEND of adopted children is being under-recognised in schools, and that adopted children with an EHCP are not receiving all the provision outlined in their plan.

19.         The current SEND Code of Practice makes no mention of previously looked after children as a cohort with particular needs, and there is no intersection between the Code and other provisions made for this cohort, such as post-LAC PP+ and the Adoption Support Fund, leading to a situation where professionals are uncertain as to which route to follow in order to meet a child’s needs.

20.         There are huge inequalities between the employment pay and leave entitlements of birth parents on the one hand and on adoptive and special guardianship parents on the other. Self-employed adopters are not eligible for statutory adoption pay because they are not employees, but neither are they able to claim the equivalent to the statutory maternity allowance that self-employed birth parents can.

21.         Employed adopters who earn under the threshold to be able to claim Statutory Adoption Pay are not able to claim an equivalent to Statutory Maternity Allowance, as employed birth parents can.

22.         Government guidance suggests local authorities consider making a payment of financial support equivalent to the Maternity Allowance to adoptive parents who are ineligible to receive Statutory Adoption Pay, but this is not mandatory, and any discretionary payments are means tested. In addition to risking the stability of adoptions in the early stages, this policy undermines the government’s strategy to recruit more adopters.

Evidence

To what extent has the Act improved the situation for the most vulnerable children, young people and families in England? To the extent that it has not, is this because of the Act itself, its implementation, or challenges which subsequently emerged, whether lasting or temporary?

23.         Part one of the Act set out proposals intended to speed up the adoption process and enable more children to be placed in stable, loving homes with less delay and disruption. The Children and Families Act 2014 sought to address delay in the adoption system, so that where adoption is right for the child then more children can benefit from adoption. However, the latest quarterly data shows that the children who already have a best interest decision are today waiting longer for permanence.[6] The average number of days spent waiting to be placed with a Placement Order since entering care is currently 681 days, an increase of 27 days from last quarter and an increase of 43 days when compared to this quarter last year.[7] Overall, the number of children matched and placed with adoptive families continues to decline.  According to the latest government data the average wait for a child to be adopted is 2 years and 2 months, up from 1 year and 11 months in 2018. In 2021, the average time between a child entering care and being placed for adoption was 1 year and 4 months, with a further 10 months for an adoption order to be granted and the adoption to be completed.[8]

24.         The Act sought to tackle challenges highlighted in the 2012 report ‘An Action Plan for Adoption’, which highlighted the high numbers of children looked after by the state at the time (65,000), yet relatively low number of annual adoptions (3,050).  However, almost a decade later, the number of children looked after by local authorities in England had risen to 80,850 and the number of children looked after who were adopted has fallen further still to 2,870 in 2021, continuing the fall from a peak of 5,360 in 2015.[9]  The number of children moving into and through the adoption process continues to decline, because of a decrease in the number of best interest decisions being made.  

25.         The Act sought to enable a quicker adoption process by requiring Local Authorities to consider placing children with a foster carer who is also a prospective adopter (“concurrent planning”). However, respondents to successive Adoption Barometer[10] surveys have highlighted the existing challenges inherent in pursuing fostering for adoption, including difficulties managing high levels of direct contact, lack of communication with them and between professionals, concerns around safeguarding where the child's birth family lives locally, lack of follow up support if the child is subsequently placed elsewhere, and training and preparation courses which do not adequately prepare them for fostering for adoption. One respondent to the Adoption Barometer 2022 (not yet published) said, “Each week I would have two different social worker visits, a health visitor, a fostering social worker telephoning weekly and four contact sessions over 40 minutes’ drive away.” Another said, “The system seems almost set up against the ‘foster carers’ and we have often been left out of communications about the care of the baby we have been looking after every day.” Survey respondents who were parenting children as part of an early permanence arrangement were more likely to have experienced symptoms of stress, anxiety, or post-adoption depression than average – 74% compared to 61% of all new adopters. Fostering for adoption requires a bespoke preparation route, and a framework for ensuring support needs are met during early placement which recognises that carer-adopters are primarily prospective adopters and not professional foster carers.

26.         The Act sought to reduce delay by removing the explicit legal wording around a child’s ethnicity so that black and minority ethnic children are not left waiting in care longer than necessary because local authorities are seeking a perfect or partial ethnic match. Adoption UK evidence reports between 87 – 89% of matching stage adopters have been matched with a child of similar ethnic background to their family – remaining consistent over 4 years of the Adoption Barometer. 

27.         Last year’s government data shows that black children were more likely to be looked-after (7%) and less likely to be adopted (2%) compared with their share of the under-18 year old population (5%).[11] The latest quarterly data shows that out of 620 children with a Placement Order waiting to be matched longer than 18 months, 200 of these (20%) were from ethnic minorities – whilst the number of children from ethnic minority background waiting with a Placement Order was 17%. [12] The number of adoptions of children from Asian or Asian British backgrounds was 2% last year - an increase of 1% since 2018; the number of Black, African, Caribbean or Black British adoptions has remained the same at 2% since 2018; and the number of mixed or multiple ethnic group adoptions remains the same at 10% of adoptions, the same since 2018.[13]  Data has shown that black children, especially black boys, wait the longest to be adopted from care. Largely this is because of a lack of black adopters, something the government’s #YouCanAdopt campaign has sought to address. However, more needs to be done, including improvements to the data gathered so that we can better understand the barriers to adoption for different ethnic groups.

28.         The Act gave powers to the Secretary of State to require local authorities to commission adopter recruitment services from one or more other adoption agencies with the aim of approving people to adopt in different areas. It also gave approved prospective adopters a more active role in identifying possible matches with children for whom the local authority is considering adoption by allowing access to the Adoption and Children Act Register.

29.         There are currently sufficient approved adopters to match the number of families required for the children waiting. However, fewer children are being matched and placed with adoptive parents, and a greater proportion of children are waiting longer. The proportion of children with Hard to Place characteristics remains high and these children continue to wait the longest, indicating that the current approved adopter families do not meet the needs of the children waiting. 53% of children with a Placement Order have been waiting 18+ months since entering care. 76% of all children waiting with a PO waiting 18+ months since entering care had one or more Hard to Place characteristics, the same as last year. The gap between the number of approved adopter families waiting and children waiting is increasing. There were 580 more adopter families waiting than children waiting with a Placement Order in the latest quarter.[14] There also remain regional variations.[15]

30.         The RAA Leaders Group are taking steps to better identify systemic problems with matching to help address issues with matching, including improving the quality of data and ensuring Link Maker is used efficiently.

31.         The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence, of which Adoption UK acts as joint secretariat, alongside Home for Good, held a three-month Inquiry in 2021 ahead of the publication of its report ‘Strengthening Families’.[16] The Inquiry heard that 87% of adoptive parents identified matching as vital in enabling future stability for adoptive families but found that matching practices are “all too often inconsistent, with adopters feeling ill-prepared for the process”. The report recommends that the assessment and training process for prospective adopters should provide thorough preparation for the matching stage; and the opportunities presented by digital tools such as Link Maker should be harnessed much more effectively.

32.         The Act sought to improve support for adopted people and their families by placing new duties on local authorities to provide personal budgets upon request. Adoption Support Plans, required under the Adoption and Children Act 2002, are intended to help set out the support requirements for adoptive families. Guidance for local authorities, provided via the Procedures Online portal, sets out what each local authority must include when completing an Adoption Support Plan.  Financial Support, if applicable, should be included in the Plan: ”The Adoption Support Plan should include any proposed financial support, how the amount has been calculated, where it is to be paid in instalments - the frequency of payment, the period over which it will be paid and when the first payment is to be made, the conditions and the consequences of failing to meet them and the arrangements for review, variation and termination”.

33.         Adoption UK research shows that most new adopters do not have – or are not aware of – any adoption support plan. According to this year’s Adoption Barometer, 62% of adopters whose child was placed in 2021 said that they did not have a written plan for post adoption support, which was lower than in 2020 (71%) but still worryingly high. The DfE report, ‘The views and experiences of approved adopters in five regional adoption agencies’ (Oct 2021), also highlighted the number of new adopters who do not have a written plan or were not aware of having one. Of 20 adoptive parents interviewed for that report, only 13 could recall receiving a written support plan and this was only after they were reminded what a support plan was as part of the research interview. Adoption UK are unaware of evidence assessing financial support awarded by local authorities for the purpose of personal budgets and their impact on the support needs of adoptive families.

34.         The Adoption Support Fund (ASF), provides funding for therapeutic services for eligible adoptive and special guardianship order families, applied for via the local authority or RAA. This is distinct from any personal budget agreed with a local authority for a one-off payment but is widely agreed to be a vital provision of support. According to data from the Adoption Barometer, each year around 40-45% of adopters will make or attempt to make an application to the ASF via their local authority, of which 61-63% will be within the fair access limit.

35.         Adopters identify problems both with the timescales involved and with the range of support offered. In the Adoption Barometer 2022 (unpublished), only 44% felt that the application process was completed in a timely manner and only 48% felt they were offered a range of appropriate interventions or support. The longest delays are at the stage of requesting an assessment of support needs, with 32% waiting six months or longer after their initial request. Even after the ASF funding is approved, one quarter of respondents found that they waited a further six months or longer for the funded support to begin. The fair access limit and uncertainties around continuing funding create challenges for families and, in some cases, interruptions in support provision. One 2022 Adoption Barometer respondent said, “The ASF has run out and our son is desperate for his therapy to continue.” Another commented, “The financial constraints of the ASF mean that we have to continually reapply for the support which we continue to need and will need for a number of years to come.”

36.         Delays and bureaucracy also have negative implications for service providers which can lead to discontinuity of provision - “The way that the ASF is administered means that our child’s therapist does not get paid in a timely fashion. Because of the financial instability this brings, she is now withdrawing from working with children funded through the ASF. This is a devastating blow to our child.”

37.         Despite its limitations, 81% of respondents to the Adoption Barometer agreed the ASF-funded support had a significant positive impact on their child and 93% would be likely to make further applications in the future. The ASF is undoubtedly a welcome provision for adoptive families, but delays, uncertainty around continuing funding, limitations in the support that can be offered (sometimes linked to problems with local provision), and difficulties obtaining match funding for interventions that fall outside of the fair access limit (55% of those whose applications were above the limit said their local authority had not agreed to match funding at the time of the survey) are potentially limiting its effectiveness.
38.         The Act sought to improve support by requiring local authorities to give prospective adopters and adoptive parents information about their entitlements to support. According to this year’s Adoption Barometer three quarters of newly placed adopters said that once they had received the adoption order they felt confident they knew where to go for adoption support, although this is not the same as knowing which services are available to them. Efforts to disseminate information on existing services, for example through the Adoption Passport and First4Adoption[17], have gone some way to ensure adopters are aware of what help is available, but much provision is down to the discretion of local authorities, which is in turn dependent on local authority budgets and local service availability. Thus, adoption support services can be something of a postcode lottery, acknowledged by the Government in its National Adoption Strategy which sets out a vision for outcomes-based ‘national standards’ for adoption support services in the future.[18]

39.         The Act aims to reduce the disruption caused by inappropriate contact through changes to contact arrangements. There is considerable evidence that arrangements for indirect contact between adopted children/young people and birth relatives are not effective in practice for the large proportion of adopted children. For example, although 75% of Adoption Barometer 2022 (unpublished) respondents from England reported having an agreement for indirect contact with their child’s birth mother, and 77% of those were still maintaining that agreement to some extent, 61% reported that their child’s birth mother did not participate in the indirect contact arrangement at all. Indirect contact relationships with birth siblings were most likely to be both enduring and reciprocated.

40.         Where contact is not reciprocated, adoptive parents frequently note that birth relatives need more support to engage, and their adopted children need more support to manage the emotional implications of never receiving a reply to letterbox letters. Although nearly one third of Adoption Barometer 2022 respondents reported being engaged in direct contact with birth relatives during 2021, the majority of these arrangements were not operating within a formal agreement. 18% of adopted children represented by respondents were engaged in informal direct contact with a birth sibling, and only 4% were engaged in birth sibling direct contact with a formal agreement.

41.         Adopter’s perceptions of the quality of the support they receive for direct or indirect contact are low. 58% say contact is well-managed by their agency and 50% say they feel well-supported by their agency. Contact arrangements that are set up at the time of the adoption are not routinely reviewed to account for the changing needs of children and the changing situations of birth relatives. Adopters frequently report writing letterbox letters with no idea whether the birth relative will ever receive them and only 31% have a named person at their agency who they can go to for advice and support around contact.

42.         In the age of widespread social media use, court orders prohibiting contact are as difficult to enforced as court orders mandating it. In England, each year approximately one quarter of adopted 13-18-year-olds will have direct contact with a birth relative outside of any formal agreement (according to successive Adoption Barometer reports). Around one quarter of these contacts will be initiated by the young person without the involvement of their adoptive parents and one in five will be a result of a birth relative finding an adopted young person via social media.

43.         The systems for establishing and maintaining contact – direct and indirect – need a complete overhaul, with provision of resourcing that is commensurate with the immense importance of getting this right for adopted children and young people. Letterbox is not working at all for the majority and urgent consideration must be given to replacing this service with a more flexible, technology-based approach.

44.         There is definite openness towards maintaining direct contact among adopters (70% of prospective adopters agree that direct contact should be normal where deemed safe) but the support available to families is insufficient and unresponsive. Only 18% of Adoption Barometer 2022 respondents whose children had direct contact reported receiving any preparatory support in advance of beginning direct contact, and only 15% said their agency regularly and pro-actively reviews arrangements for direct contact. Support for managing direct contact needs to be made clear to prospective adopters as part of preparation, and children’s views on establishing or maintaining contact should be ascertained regularly throughout childhood with arrangements modified to take their wishes into account. While unplanned direct contact in the teen years is not inevitable, it is sufficiently likely that all adoptive families need to be offered training, life story/history support and preparatory support as children approach their teen years in preparation for managing unplanned direct contact should it occur.

45.         The Act extended entitlements so that children in care going straight through to adoption have access to priority school admissions, the pupil premiums and are eligible for free early education for 2-year-olds. Priority school admission is a helpful initiative for adoptive families and the recent change to include children adopted overseas is welcomed. However, priority school admissions only have full effect during the normal admissions round in YR or Y7. At all other times, priority admissions will realistically result in adopted children being placed at or near the top of a waiting list.

46.         Each year, 12-15% of adoptive parents will change their child’s school to find a school that can better meet their child’s needs and priority admissions will not necessarily help their parents to secure a place at the school of their choice. Unlike with looked after children, the local authority does not have powers of direction to ensure that schools offer a place to previously looked after children in these circumstances. Additionally, where a child has an EHCP, priority admissions have no bearing and there are no measures to give previously looked after children priority in the naming of suitable provision on the EHCP. This can mean that an adopted child without an EHCP can automatically gain a place at a mainstream school through priority access, but an adopted child with an EHCP can be refused a place at the same school.

47.         Adoptive parents’ perceptions of the impact of pupil premium funding for previously looked after children (post-LAC PP+) indicate that this initiative is not achieving the hoped-for outcomes, and there is little formal monitoring of the use of post-LAC PP+ with which to measure its effectiveness. 96% of respondents to the Adoption Barometer 2021 were aware of their child’s eligibility for post-LAC PP+, but only 73% knew that their child’s school was receiving the funding in respect of their child. Perceptions of the effectiveness of this funding were very low, with 30% agreeing that their child’s school was transparent in its use of the funds, and 38% agreeing that the school was using the funds appropriately for the needs of previously looked after children.

48.         Adoption UK’s From Both Sides report (2022) highlighted barriers faced by schools, including lack of clarity around the purpose and appropriate use of post-LAC PP+ for schools, inadequate information sharing within and between settings, problems with sufficiency and timing of delivery of the funding, and lack of a suitable framework (such as a Personal Education Plan) within which to plan the best use of the funding and monitor outcomes.

If there were to be a Children and Families Act 2022, what should it include and what might be the barriers to implementation?

49.         The following to be laid out in regulations:

1. Tailor preparation courses to meet family’s needs – tailored preparation to be provided for those pursuing fostering for adoption or concurrent care, those planning to adopt a sibling group and those adopting for a second time (including additional tailored training post-matching where appropriate).
2. Build life story training into preparation courses to give parents additional support to prepare for and manage indirect and direct contact and understand the implications of this for their future child/children.
3. Entitlements to statutory adoption pay for self-employed adopters to be brought into line with maternity entitlements for the self-employed.
4. All children to receive a full therapeutic assessment before adoption which informs a clear, written, multi-agency support plan anticipating future as well as current support needs and a linked commitment to provide the specified support through adoption support services or other statutory services, including CAMHS and education (as introduced in the Northern Ireland Adoption and Children Bill, 2022, awaiting Royal Assent)
5. All new adoptive families to receive a formal review of their child’s adoption support plan 12 months after the adoption order.
6. All adoptive families to be proactively offered an annual ‘keeping in touch’ opportunity by their agency to discuss and review their child’s adoption support needs.
7. All adoptive families to be offered specific training and support relating to their child's arrangements for direct and indirect contact, including at preparation stage, and a requirement to offer all adoptive families a review of their children’s contact plans on request, and at key points in childhood (e.g. one year after the adoption order, around the time of transition to secondary education, mid-teens and in preparation for adulthood aged 16-17).
8. Extend adoption support services to all adopted young people at least until the age of 26, including ASF-funded support and support for establishing and maintaining birth family contact.

Is the Act enabling faster, more secure and stable adoptions which are in the best interests of the child?

50.         See response to Q1 – paragraphs 23 - 48.

Have the reforms to the family justice system succeeded in making the system faster, simpler and less adversarial? How has the Act interacted with other reforms to the family justice system, for example the changes to legal aid? Does the 26-week limit on care and placement proceedings strike the correct balance between justice and speed?

51.         While the 26-week limit is intended to reduce drift and delay where children enter care due to abuse, neglect or other circumstances where the child’s caregiver is deemed to pose a risk to the child, it can be inappropriate where previously looked after children re-enter the care system in circumstances where their parents or carers are not deemed to pose a risk, but where the support available to the family is not sufficient to maintain a safe home for the child, any siblings and the adults involved.

52.         There are no national statistics on the proportion of adopted children who leave the family home prematurely, but successive Adoption Barometer reports suggest that around 3-4% of adoptive families will experience this each year with around four in five of the children involved being aged 13 or older. Not all these children will re-enter care, but between one quarter and one third of those living outside the family home will be in care on a voluntary basis (Section 20) each year.

53.         Families in this situation frequently view this separation as a temporary measure, hoping either that support can be put in place so that the child can return home (approximately one third of respondents), or, where the child is older, they can continue to parent ‘at a distance’ until their child is able to live independently and is no longer looked after (approximately half of respondents). In these cases, it is essential that there is time to assess the situation and put a package of therapeutic support in place to offer the best chance of family reunification or rebuilding of relationships. 26 weeks often does not provide sufficient time for this to take place, especially as the Adoption Support Fund has not historically been available to these families. In fact, many of these families will have been unsuccessfully seeking support for years prior to reaching crisis point: “Complete failure by both children’s services and post adoption support team to offer any concrete help. I only found out about [non-violent resistance training] after the breakdown and no one offered it to us.” (Adoptive parent, Adoption Barometer, 2021).

54.         This time limit, coupled with a tendency for systems and procedures within the care system to be founded on the assumption that the risk is from the adult to the child, rather than from the child to themselves, to their siblings or to the adults, and a lack of expert understanding of the needs of adopted children and young people and their families can result in a system that keeps families apart rather than helping them rebuild. One adoptive parent wrote, “We are not viewed as the child’s parents despite having 100% [parental responsibility], parenting from a distance and having [one of our daughters] home with us every single weekend.” (Adoption Barometer 2021). In these circumstances, it is not appropriate for families to be facing the ticking clock of the 26-week limit. The focus of professional intervention where the adults in the family are not deemed to pose a risk should be on offering therapeutic support, rebuilding relationships and working towards a safe return home if possible, and guidance and policy relating to the support of families in this situation should reflect this.

Has the Act achieved its goal of improving provision for children and young people with SEND, in all settings including mainstream schools, special schools and further education colleges? If changes are needed, could they be achieved under the framework of the Children and Families Act 2014 or is new legislation required?

55.         The Act introduced significant changes to the SEND system, including the introduction of the Education, Health, and Care (EHC) Plan and better joined up working with other agencies, including health bodies and schools; as well as providing a local offer.

56.         The review of SEND provision in England is currently underway in recognition of the need for improvements in SEND provision and it is likely that this will result in new legislation. DfE statistics demonstrate that looked after children are more likely to have SEND, especially social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH) and successive Adoption Barometer reports indicate that this is also true of adopted children. In the Adoption Barometer 2021, 40% of respondents in England had one or more adopted children with SEN Support and 40% had one or more adopted children with an EHCP.

57.         There is considerable drift and delay in identifying, assessing and providing support for children’s SEND as highlighted in the EPI’s recent report: Identifying pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, which described access to support for SEND as a “postcode lottery,” before concluding that the current system of identifying SEND requires children to stay in one place and stay visible over long periods of time to access support. Adopted and previously looked after children are unlikely to have this stability after removal from the birth home followed by moves through the care system before settling into their adoptive home, leaving them particularly vulnerable to missing out on identification of need and provision of support. Adoption UK’s Adoption Barometer 2019 report found that of 388 parents in England whose children had been assessed for, or received an EHCP in 2018, 45% of assessments had been initiated by parents and only 41% initiated by schools, furthering concerns that SEND of adopted children is being under-recognised in schools.

58.         There are also concerns around accountability where deadlines are not met, documentation is late or poor quality, independent assessments and reports are disregarded, EHCP assessments are initially refused but then overturned after parental (and sometimes legal) advocacy, and provisions outlined in the EHCP are not met. The Adoption Barometer 2020 found that 55% of adopted children with an EHCP were not receiving all the provision outlined in their plan during 2019, and 53% with SEN Support were not receiving the full provision outlined in their plan.

59.         The current SEND Code of Practice makes no mention of previously looked after children as a cohort with particular needs, and there is no intersection between the Code and other provisions made for this cohort, such as post-LAC PP+ and the Adoption Support Fund, leading to a situation where professionals are uncertain as to which route to follow in order to meet a child’s needs and parents frequently report being sent from one professional to another with nobody taking overall responsibility. This cohort of children needs a truly multi-agency approach to support involving health, social care and education. Although the EHCP was created to provide this, a disjointed approach to national policy making does not support it at local level for previously looked after children.

60.         Considering high rates of SEND and the impact of early childhood adversity, neglect, abuse, trauma and care-experience, Adoption UK recommends that all care-experienced children should have an automatic right to an EHC assessment on request to reduce delay in identification and provision of support. Additionally, Ofsted inspections of education settings should result in a standalone grade for SEND provision with no school awarded outstanding overall unless SEND provision is outstanding. Finally, the dual roles of assessing support needs while holding the budget for provision of support presents a conflict of interest for local authorities. These two functions should be separated, and assessments carried out by an independent body with recommendations based on the child’s presenting support needs and not based on affordability or local availability.

Is the system of shared parental leave and statutory shared parental pay functioning adequately? Is the system of flexible working functioning adequately? In light of the changes to working styles brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, what changes, if any, are needed to provisions in the Act on flexible working?

61.         There remain huge inequalities between the employment pay and leave entitlements of birth parents on the one hand and on adoptive and special guardianship parents on the other. Since 1999 adoptive parents have been entitled to unpaid parental leave and in 2003 the Government announced it was introducing a right to 26 weeks’ paid adoption leave.

The rationale was: “Paid adoption leave will provide time for the adoptive child and parent to adjust to their new relationships. It is hoped that enabling adoptive parents to spend more time with their child will help reduce the number of disrupted placements”.

However, to date this is not extended to self-employed adopters. Self-employed adopters are not eligible for statutory adoption pay because they are not employees, but neither are they able to claim the equivalent to the statutory maternity allowance that self-employed birth parents can. Similarly, employed adopters who earn under the threshold to be able to claim Statutory Adoption Pay are not able to claim an equivalent to Statutory Maternity Allowance, as employed birth parents can.

62.         The Government’s Statutory Guidance on Adoption[19] - written almost a decade ago – suggests to local authorities they consider making a payment of financial support equivalent to the Maternity Allowance to adoptive parents who are ineligible to receive Statutory Adoption Pay. However, there is no duty on the local authority to do so, and as confirmed in response to a recent parliamentary question, no data has been collected about the extent to which local authorities provide support as specified in paragraph 9.38 of the guidance.[20]

63.         The refusal to equalise parental leave and pay entitlements is a policy choice that serves as a disincentive to prospective adopters who would struggle financially to take the necessary time off work in the crucial, early stages of adoption. It also penalises self-employed single adopters unable to lean on their partners earnings and prevents couples accessing shared parental leave, where one parent is self-employed.

64.         In responses to a recent survey carried out by the Petitions Committee ahead of a backbench business debate on an e-petition relating to support for new adoptive parents, adopters reported needing more time away from work to bond with and care for their child than the average birth parents. One parent explained: “With my birth child I took a blissful period off work with reassurance that I was receiving a small amount of money each month. With my (adopted) son, he came into our lives frightened, raging and damaged, we barely slept at night for well over a year and my entire family were mentally and physically exhausted, we received no financial support”. This goes to the heart of what adoption is. Most adopted children will have had a very difficult start in life, three quarters will have experienced abuse and neglect. All have lost their birth family and endured moves through the care system before finding a permanent home. Transitions such as moving home can re-traumatise the child and new parents need to be given all the support they can to help their child settle in and feel safe and loved.

65.         It is clear the government understand the importance of this to the success of an adoption. Giving evidence to the Petition’s Committee Inquiry[21], Business Minister Paul Scully acknowledged that: “It is crucial to the success of an adoption placement that an adopter takes time off work to care for and bond with their child”. In addition to risking the stability of adoptions in the early stages, this policy undermines the government’s strategy to recruit more adopters, vital if it is serious about the commitment to give as many children as possible the opportunity of a stable, loving home. In England, there are around 1,870 children waiting to be adopted and the number of children adopted from care in England is down by almost half compared to six years ago – whilst the average time that children wait, from entry into care to being adopted, is now on average two years and two months. All of this sits against a backdrop of a rise in the number of children being placed into the care of local authorities – up by 1% this year, to an all-time high of 80,850.[22]

66.         Where adoption introductions are long (some are three weeks) the two-weeks paternity leave for the partner who is not the main caregiver can run out before the child has even moved in, leaving the main caregiver unsupported at the most crucial moment. Regulations should be amended so that the second parent can receive two weeks standard leave beginning on the formal first day of placement (when the child moves in), plus additional statutory paid leave to cover the introductory period before that (normally from one to three weeks).

For queries, please contact Katharine Slocombe, Policy and Public Affairs Adviser, Adoption UK: katharine.slocombe@adoptionuk.org.uk

April 2022

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