set up an adoption task force and introduced local authority adoption targets. It can be argued that the emphasis on adoption during the 1980s and 1990s – as the preferred solution to the very real problems of some care leavers – blinded politicians and policy makers to the needs of children continuing to grow up in foster or residential care. The drive to meet targets too frequently led to the splitting of siblings, often with a loss of contact that was devastating to some of the older children remaining in care. It also resulted in children being moved inappropriately from foster families where they were well settled.


How effective is the adoption service?


What a pity, therefore, that in some ministerial speeches, the ‘naming and shaming’ element has been so much in evidence, especially since crude numbers and percentages, without a deeper analysis of a particular authority’s broader services, may mean praise or blame will be wrongly allocated. League tables are too crude to pick up, for


In this light, the apparent recent return by the coalition government to an emphasis on adoption can be seen as a step backwards


During this period it sometimes seemed that the adoption tail was wagging the care service dog, neglecting appropriate permanence options for the larger numbers in long-term foster and residential care, for whom adoption was either not achievable or not wanted by the children themselves. After implementation of the Adoption and


Children Act 2002, the attempt by courts to link adoption placement orders with care orders had, in some cases, the unintended consequence of care proceedings being prolonged. But, at the same time, a new series of government initiatives brought a change of emphasis, by placing an equal value on adoption and long-term foster care as permanence options. And special guardianship orders provided an alternative legal permanence option for some children.


In 2003 the Labour government’s Every Child


Matters report stated that there was a ‘need to ensure that different permanence options are equally credible, including long-term fostering’, while Care Matters four years later reinforced this message. It was confirmed again by the Children and Young Persons Act 2008.


In this light, the apparent recent return by the


coalition government to an emphasis on adoption can be seen as a step backwards. On the positive side, ministers have moved to make available robust data on adoption alongside other permanence options and outcome measures. They have made it clear that they have learned the lessons about perverse incentives that resulted from the last government’s adoption target regime.


June Thoburn is emeritus professor of social work, University of East Anglia


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Child and young adult wellbeing outcomes


example, the fact that one local authority may be succeeding well in its preventative services for families with young children; another may place more older children, but be taking longer to ensure successful outcomes; or another may be providing an in-care service for vulnerable teenagers. All are likely to reduce the proportion of younger children in the ‘adoptable’ groups. It should also be pointed out that, when the


numbers leaving care through adoption and special guardianship orders are added together, the data show a rising trend from around 2,500 each year in the early 2000s to just under 4,500 in 2010-11, something which has not been highlighted. Another worrying development is the emphasis


being placed on the interests and opinions of potential adopters, both by ministers and the government’s special adviser on adoption, Martin Narey. Might this not be at the expense of meeting the assessed needs of each child in care to ensure the maximum chance that the placement will be successful? We need to know more about adoption


outcomes, but what we do know about the real difficulties encountered by an important minority of adopted children, and their adoptive parents, does not support any weakening of social workers’ attempts to ensure that only those who have the strengths and attitudes to succeed are approved as adopters or permanent foster families. In summary, there are many positives about


recent policies (across political parties) aimed at achieving the necessary ‘sense of permanence’ for children who need to enter care and cannot safely return to their birth parents. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 provisions, pilots such as ‘Right2Bcared4’ and ‘staying put’, together with the proposals in the Norgrove report on the family justice system (MoJ, 2011), are aimed at tackling some of the very real weaknesses, especially around placement instability. But how sad that the very real achievements of child and family social workers and specialist adoption teams appear so often to go unrecognised. SWM


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