Adoption Support Services: Summary of Brief Reviews Adoption Support Transfer Protocol Strengthening Families: Improving Stability for Adopted Children

Strengthening Families: Improving Stability for Adopted Children

Download the Document

APPG Report Improving Stability for Adopted Children ( PDF, 2.02 MB)
View

Accessible Version of the Report

Strengthening Families - Improving Stability for Adopted Children

About the APPG

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Adoption and Permanence (APPGAP) was established in February 2019 with the following purpose: 

To amplify the voices and experiences of children and families engaged in adoption and other forms of permanence, to inform parliamentarians and promote the development and implementation of effective policy and practice. To provide an opportunity for the ambitious exploration of innovative solutions to enable adopted children and families to thrive.

This report follows a three-month inquiry chaired by Rachael Maskell MP and is based on the evidence received as part of this inquiry. It has been compiled by representatives from the secretariat to the group, including Rebecca Patterson and Natalie Mills from Home for Good, and Alison Woodhead from Adoption UK.

Please note: Children and young people have been anonymised throughout this report for confidentiality purposes

Foreword from the Chair - Rachael Maskell MP, Chair of the APPG for Adoption and Permanence

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Adoption and Permanence sees that ‘strengthening families’ must be placed at the heart of the adoption process. With the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care examining a child’s place in the system, we have sought to focus on one aspect, adoption, and to look at this from multiple perspectives, including adoptees and their lived experiences, adoptive parents and birth parents, a broad range of advocacy organisations and agencies, and so many more.

Our inquiry recognised the complex and often fragile network of relationships surrounding adopted children and young people, and how the right interventions at the right time can strengthen them, giving a young person greater security and confidence. However, conversely, without the integrated support needed by all involved in the adoption process, trauma could result, and this could lead to multiple challenges. For this reason, we not only looked at the whole adoption process and the interplay between all those involved in this, but we also focused on where the greatest challenges reside. Through our recommendations, we seek to be ambitious in ensuring that not only the funding, but also the services are there to get things right from the start. At the centre of our findings, we identified the need to move from ‘family finding’, the initial stage of the adoption process, to ‘family building’, recognising that adoption needs to be a lifelong commitment, not just for adoptive families, but the whole system. 

Through greater focus on working with adopted children and their families, there must be recognition that investment in the support needs of the family is a lifelong commitment, not just in its initial stages. The APPGAP inquiry listened to all; not least young people who are care experienced. In seeking stability, they expressed how everyone has an active role to play in making the right provision. Just as the Review’s The Case for Change calls for a society-wide effort to secure better outcomes for children in and around the social care system, so too this same call must apply for adopted children. 

We welcome the opportunities provided by the Review for adoptive families to feed in their perspectives and are optimistic that the outcome of the Review will be a holistic, system-wide take on children’s social care, in which the needs of adopted children are firmly part of the analysis and recommendations. From the national to the local, from the community to the individual, stability will only be achieved for adopted children and their families when it is everyone’s focus. To build the right support requires investment. Making the right funding available at the right time saves time, money, and trauma from occurring. There can be no greater investment than in securing the future of children and young people, by enabling them to grow into confident adults with the security and support needed. There can be no short cuts and therefore we recognise that the benefits gained by the right investment can only bring far more positive outcomes. The recently published national Adoption Strategy is welcomed by the APPGAP. It sets out a series of proposals which span right across the adoption system. We welcome that children and families are at the heart of its vision. This report on ‘strengthening families’ seeks to complement the high-level approach of the strategy by focusing on practice, grounded in lived experiences. There is scope for some significant and specific areas of development, which the APPGAP has highlighted through a series of tangible and actionable recommendations. 

Throughout this report, we have kept the views, perspectives, and opinions of children, young people, and families front and centre recognising that their voices must be listened to. We hope that the Review of Children’s Social Care and the Government will listen to their experiences and act on the evidence as conveyed through this report.

Executive Summary

The inquiry heard about the vital importance of Laying Strong Foundations for adopted children and their families firstly through good matching. 87% of adoptive parents identified that matching plays a crucial role in enabling future stability for adoptive families. However, matching practices are all too often inconsistent, with adopters feeling ill-prepared for the process. 

 

To make a strong match, it is imperative that a child’s needs are comprehensively assessed by a multi-disciplinary team and that adopters are provided with all available information. This should then form the basis of a robust and deliverable support plan, which is put in place from the start. The inquiry also heard that more needs to be done for children who wait the longest for adoption, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds who face additional barriers to finding an adoptive family. 

 

The second principle for stability, Acting Early, recognises that support for families should be proactively embedded and responsively provided to meet their needs from the earliest days all the way through childhood, in recognition that the legacy of adverse experiences does not disappear once an adoptive family is established. The long-term retention of the Adoption Support Fund (ASF), as well as improvements in access and its operation, is crucial to enabling this to happen.

 

Acting early also means investing in and improving the practice of approaches that seek to provide stability earlier on, such as Early Permanence. The inquiry heard compelling evidence about the merits and challenges of such approaches and recommends further consideration as to whether such routes could be used for other groups of children, including older children.

 

Throughout the inquiry, the APPGAP heard about the importance of Cultivating Relationships. For adopted children, a continuity of relationship with former foster carers, social workers, birth family members, and their local community, can be critical to their experience of stability. 

These important relationships should be prioritised and nurtured wherever possible and appropriate. The fourth principle, Recognising Evolving Needs, examines some of the key points in an adoptive family’s journey where support is particularly needed. This includes education and the need for trauma-informed teachers and schools that are fully trained and equipped to help care experienced children thrive. 

We heard that many challenges faced by adoptive families are particularly heightened and intensified during the teenage years. Adopted teenagers can often be overlooked by support services and more needs to be done to ensure that they receive the support they need. Without the right support at the right time, a small number of families face the devastating prospect of their child being unable to remain living with them and re-entering the care system. It is crucial that these families are supported, and the APPGAP recommends that funding from the ASF is made available to all adopted children who have re-entered care and that those parenting at a distance are fully supported in maintaining a relationship with their child, where possible. 

There are two additional themes that are woven through this report. Firstly, our technological age brings significant opportunities as well as challenges, and the inquiry heard about the potential of digital tools in enabling innovative practice in areas such as matching, support, and contact. Secondly, the vital importance of agency was repeatedly emphasised. More needs to be done to allow the voices of adopted children and young people, adoptive parents, and birth family members to be heard in meaningful ways, particularly when they are reaching out for support. We welcome the inclusion of this aspect in the Government’s recently published Adoption Strategy for England. The report makes four headline recommendations, with specific supplementary recommendations under each, all of which are aimed at improving stability for adopted children and their families. The full list of recommendations can be found on Page 61 of this report.

Summary for Children and Young People

What does stability mean? Feeling safe, secure, and supported, knowing what to expect, and experiencing consistent love.

What we found: Stability is very important for adopted children and young people, as they need to feel safe and supported to be able to reach their potential. We heard from lots of adopted children and young people, adoptive parents, social workers, and many others about the things that need to change so that adopted children and their families can feel safe and stable throughout their lives. These areas are like building blocks that when put together, help to make a building stable. They are:

  • Laying strong foundations: Adoptive families need to be well set up and supported from the start. Children must be matched with a family who can meet their needs and we must make sure that no child waits too long to be adopted due to the colour of their skin, their age, or any other factor.
  • Acting early: Sometimes it takes adoptive families a long time to get the support they need, and this isn’t good. When families go through tricky times, they should get the support they need right away.
  • Cultivating relationships: It is really important that adopted children are able to keep in touch with adults who have played important roles in their lives, if they want to. This could be a former foster carer, a social worker, or someone from their birth family or community.
  • Recognising evolving needs: The challenges faced by adopted children change over time. Many adopted children find school to be a difficult place, so we want to see teachers trained to better help and support adopted children. Support must be there for children throughout their childhood, including when they are teenagers, as this can be a tricky time for some young people.

These are some of the big changes that we want to see:

  1. Every adopted child and young person should have a great support plan, so that families know how and where to get support when they need it.
  2. The Adoption Support Fund, which enables adopted children and their families to get help from the right people, must carry on for at least ten years.
  3. Adopted children should be supported to stay in touch with important adults in their lives if they want to, including their foster carer(s), birth family members, or a previous social worker.
  4. Schools and teachers must be better trained so that they can help adopted children who have gone through challenging experiences.

Summary of Recommendations

Adopted children share many of the same early experiences as children in care, and the legacy of early trauma does not cease with the making of an Adoption Order. As such, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England should ensure that the experiences of adopted children and their families are given due consideration and are reflected in the reforms proposed in their final report. Therefore, we urge the Review team to consider the following recommendations:

Principle 1: Laying Strong Foundations

RECOMMENDATION: Prioritise stability for children and instil confidence in prospective and new adopters about the journey ahead by improving the quality and consistency of matching and support planning. This should be achieved in the following ways:

 

  • The assessment and training process for prospective adopters should provide thorough preparation for the matching stage. This should include: what to expect in terms of the regularity of communication; how to conduct difficult conversations about whether or not a child is a good match; how to remain emotionally resilient; and how to support any birth or other children in the family during the matching process.

 

  • Digital tools hold the potential to significantly improve matching between children and families. The capabilities of digital tools such as Link Maker should be built upon and developed to enhance efficiency and quality of matching. This could include the generation of live data at a national level of children waiting and being placed for adoption in order to aid real-time decision making, at both the national and local levels (i.e. in terms of recruitment, matching, and policy)

 

  • We must ensure that there is racial diversity and representation amongst the social work workforce and on adoption and matching panels. Research should be conducted to ascertain current levels of diversity and an action plan developed, based on the findings.

 

  • It should be mandatory for every adopted child to have a long-term, costed, and deliverable support plan in place from the start, which is updated on an ongoing basis. The Department for Education should update statutory guidance on support planning, providing best practice examples of such plans, along with a clear expectation that families should be centrally involved in the development of support plans in partnership with multi-disciplinary professionals. Families should have easy access to the expertise provided by these professionals in order to further support them in understanding the needs of their child(ren). We commend the good practice of Adoption Now in their facilitation of specialist consultations between adopters and the adoption support team, which have been vital in the development of long-term and robust support plans.
     
  • To ensure that individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds have a positive experience of exploring and pursuing adoption, social workers should be supported and trained to take a culturally literate approach in their work. The feedback and experiences of people from ethnic minority backgrounds who have previously engaged with the adoption process should be incorporated into the development of this training.
     
  • Every Local Authority should have a published strategy on how they identify, at the earliest stages, those children who are likely to wait longer for adoption, accompanied by a clear process for seeking to match these children with a family in a timely way. Existing frameworks such as the RAG rating tool developed by a group of agencies in the North West could be utilised in the development of these strategies.

Principle 2: Acting Early

RECOMMENDATION: Improve the initial stages of a child’s journey into adoption by normalising early and ongoing support and further developing Early Permanence practice. This should be achieved in the following ways:

  • The Government must guarantee the long-term retention of the Adoption Support Fund for a further ten years with accompanying guidance reinforcing that the ASF can be used at any stage in an adoptive family’s journey (to mitigate against any informal thresholds).
  • Newly adoptive families should be able to access an additional pot of funding through the ASF during the first 12 months after the Adoption Order has been granted. 
  • All new adopters should be signposted to local and national peer-support networks and services as standard practice.
  • In recognition of the benefits of Early Permanence for children, we commend the recent research by Lancaster University and its findings that EP practice is inconsistent and needs further development to ensure that good practice is disseminated more widely. In taking this work forward, the following aspects should be addressed:

• there should be a parity of training provided to EP carers so that they feel equally equipped in their role as foster carers as well as adopters; 

• training for FfA carers in particular should include stories of reunification with birth family to ensure carers feel better prepared about the risks involved despite adoption being pursued as the main plan; and 

• national data gathered by the ASGLB should distinguish between the two types of EP to enable a clearer picture of the use of EP nationally and locally.

Principle 3: Cultivating Relationships

RECOMMENDATION: Enable children to experience a continuity of relationships with key adults by recognising those who have played a part in their journey. This should be achieved in the following ways:

  • The Department for Education should update statutory guidance to further emphasise the importance of children maintaining links with former foster carers. This should include every child being prepared and supported in an age and developmentally appropriate way for their transition from their foster carer to adoptive family, as well as communicating with the child about how the relationship with their foster carer will be cultivated going forward, as appropriate.
  • Adoptive families should be encouraged and supported to maintain links with the foster carer when in the child’s best interests.
  • Future evaluations of RAAs should include monitoring the consistency of relationships experienced by adoptive families with social workers and professionals, and the impact this has on families’ experience of support.
  • The voices and experiences of birth families are not listened to enough, and yet we recognise their important role in an adopted child’s journey. The adoption sector as a whole must do better in creating safe spaces and mechanisms for listening to and drawing on birth families’ experiences to inform practice.
  • Professionals and families should take note of the existing positive relationships that a child has with individuals from their wider peer network and local community, and should seek to maintain these links where possible. In many instances, cultivating these relationships can provide support and continuity for the child, particularly in the transition to their adoptive family.

Principle 4: Recognising Evolving Needs

RECOMMENDATION: Standardise long-term support that is proactive and responsive to the changing needs of adoptive families by taking a flexible and committed approach. This should be achieved in the following ways: 

The Teachers’ Standards should be updated to include specific guidance on the need for trauma-informed practice. This should outline that “a teacher must: have a clear and comprehensive understanding of the impact of trauma, FASD and attachment disorders. They must demonstrate confidence in implementing strategies and tools to engage with children facing these particular challenges, including children with care experience.” Ofsted should consider how trauma-informed practice might be monitored as part of the inspection process. 

  • Adopted young people and their families must be listened to and taken seriously when reaching out to social workers for support, particularly further down the line during the teenage years, where challenges can be most acute. 
  • Best practice guidance for supporting families with adopted adolescents should be disseminated, including training on Non-Violent Resistance, mental health, and addressing harmful behaviour. 
  • The Department for Education, along with the Department of Health and Social Care, should commission and fund the development of a digital platform that provides a one-stop-shop for adopted teenagers across the country, including mental health support, educational tools, ways to engage with adopted peers, wellbeing activities, and advocacy opportunities. This should be developed in close consultation with adopted teenagers.
  • The lack of clarity around how a supportive relationship between adoptive parents and a child who has left home prematurely and/or re-entered the care system should be addressed. Therefore, social workers, adoptive parents, and other professionals involved in the young person’s life should conduct a Reflection and Response meeting to allow for holistic reflection, learning, and the formation of a detailed plan to support the family to remain in relationship moving forward, wherever possible. It is vital at this critical point that families feel listened to, supported, and involved in decisions made.
  • The ASF should be made available to all adopted children who have re-entered care, as even when it has been deemed unlikely that they will return to live with their adoptive family, many parents remain parenting at a distance.