Over the period January 2022 to April 2023 three independent consultants who had all been senior managers in adoption services (two had been RAA Heads) completed short service reviews of 14 RAAs who requested the review. This is just under half of the 32 RAAs.
These reviews were undertaken using the Adoption Support Service Brief Review tool, which is based on the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board’s (ASGLB) commissioned blueprint for adoption support services published in 2019. The aim of the blueprint was to capture the key elements of some of the more developed adoption services available at the time, to provide a benchmark and an audit tool against which agencies could review and adjust resources and systems to make service improvements and achieve whole system change. It covers services which support adopted adults and birth families as well as adoptive families. The blueprint sets out 17 requirements of a high-quality adoption support system. It should be noted that the scoring and description of the agencies represent a snapshot and some of the snapshots of the first agencies reviewed are inevitably now dated. The reviews were completed virtually.
Preparation work included examination of the RAAs’ websites, management information, statements of purpose, service and improvement plans, leaflets for service users, and policies and procedures. This was followed by a range of virtual interviews with managers at all levels, social workers and support staff and other professionals employed by the RAA, commissioned by them or generally working in partnership with them. It was the exception to “meet” service users other than adopters who were active in the RAA and presenting the adopter voice. The report will address each of the 17 domains in the blueprint with a commentary. The mean and mode score for each domain will be given. A score of 0 indicates that this aspect was not present, 1 that it was partially present, 2 that it matched exemplar services and 3 that it exceeded exemplar services.
It emerged that RAAs are staffed by managers, social workers are other staff who are committed, creative and passionate about offering the best service possible to those affected by adoption. Where weaknesses in the service were identified, these were not usually any surprise to the senior managers. On the whole, practice met the standard expected by the blueprint although delays in the ability to complete assessments of need and to respond to adopted adults are of concern. A clear point of entry offers access to a range of services, adopters are engaged in developing services and are kept informed and risk is well understood. Birth family relationships are supported.
The reason that services for birth parents and for adopted adults have lower scores is that often “Pause” type projects for birth parents to support them in the care of any future child are not available from Local Authorities and it is the exception for an intermediary service to be offered by the RAA to adopted adults. An area where there was variation in practice in the RAAs was in the communication with children and young people and the opportunity for them to contribute to the development of 0=Not present; 1=Partially Present; 2=Matches Exempla Service; 3=Exceeds Exempla Service 2 services. Examples of very good practice were seen whilst in other RAAs this was very much a work in progress. The largest variation in the service offer came in the area of multi-agency multi-professional delivery models. The RAA who had received central government funding as a Centre of Excellence had a fully developed model of this type involving a psychiatrist, psychologists (both clinical and education) and an occupational therapist. At the other end of the scale an RAA had only a therapeutic social worker available to offer this type of intervention. One RAA employed a teacher as an education expert (funded by the virtual schools) and this was greatly valued by adopters who, as evidenced by the Adoption Barometer), face major challenges in advocating for their children’s educational needs. The offer to adoptive families from the virtual schools varied enormously not just from RAA to RAA but from Local Authority to Local Authority.
Psychologists are employed or commissioned by a number of RAAs as a resource both for social workers and for the families they serve. Strategic areas were a challenge to RAAs. Having a vision for measurable outcomes, a methodology for quantifying potential need, and monitoring and evaluation are typically areas of difficulty which reviewers hope can be addressed at national level.
- Governance structures are not inclusive of Health, Education and adopters.
- There was a variation in the good use of commissioning and procurement according to the level of support offered by the host authority.
- Workforce development plans were at very different stages.
- However, all RAAs reviewed are active in promoting improvements in the wider looked after and adoption systems by sharing their learning from adoption support.
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