Agenda item

Adoption Partnership South East is a Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) providing adoption services for Medway, Kent, and the London Borough Bexley.

The third RAA Annual Report attached (Annex A) provides information and an overview of the service, performance set against government targets and service and practice development for the period April 22 – March 23.

Discussion:

The Head of Adoption Partnership South East introduced the report to the Committee and provided some highlights since the report was written which included:

• Ofsted findings highlighted that since Medway joined the Regional Adoption Agency, there had been improvements on timeliness of identification of suitable adopters for children, prospective adopters were suitably prepared and assessed for their parenting role and the partnership appropriately prioritised the requirements of adopters to meet the needs of children.
• Significant improvements had been made and this was through joint working with Medway Children’s Services, in particular, collaboration and improvement in permanency planning, robust monitoring and tracking as well as strengthened adoption care planning.
• Medway children were being matched in significantly less time than the national average.
• There were a high number of adopters approved and available for Medway Children.
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Members then raised a number of comments and questions, which included:

The report was commended for being informative, easy to read and exceptionally professionally written.

Adopter assessments - in response to a question on length of assessments and responsibility for target setting, the officer said that the timescales were significantly better than the national average. Targets were set by the DfE, stage one was part of a two month assessment process and whilst steps were taken to keep the time scales for this stage of the process down, the agency worked with its partners to ensure that adoption regulations were followed stringently to ensure that all requirements were met before progressing to the next stage of the process. Reduction of timescales were not done at the detriment of safe approvals.

In response to a question on the number of approved waiting adopters against children waiting to be placed, the officer said that Adoption Partnership South East had 17 approved adopters and 1 Medway child that an adopter was actively being sought for. The challenge with placements was whether local adopters could match the needs of a child/children and if this were not the case, prospective adopters would be sourced nationally.

Sibling placement – it was asked whether any decisions made not to place siblings together were made based on a social workers assessment or due to resource issues. The officer was confident in the decision making process of Medway Social Workers in placement of siblings and that often the decision to keep siblings together may mean that foster care placement may be more appropriate due to their high needs. A project has been embarked on to extend the pool of adopters for sibling groups and support social workers in the decision to keep siblings together where possible. There was an increase in adopters wanting to take on siblings which was encouraging. It was also vital to recognise that some children’s needs were complex, and the high levels of trauma experienced may mean their needs would be best met if separated, despite the difficulty in the decision to separate them. In this instance, many adopters actively ensured maintaining of regular interactions between separated siblings by taking holidays together, meeting up for birthdays.

It was asked whether there were adopters that chose not to tell children that they were adopted. The officer confirmed that prospective adopters were informed right from the beginning of the expectation of honesty and that children were to be informed that they are adopted. This was non-negotiable as each child would be provided with a life story book and if prospective adopters were not comfortable with this, they did not continue in the process.

Decision:

1. The Committee noted the report.

2. The Committee requested that future reports provide detailed information on sibling placements.