Adoption England is working with partners in locations across the country to pilot seven innovative multidisciplinary and multiagency approaches to help improve adoption support for adopted children and their families.

Adoption England, a collaboration of Regional Adoption Agencies (RAA) with a small national team, works to improve and modernise adoption services and systems, including improving adoption support offered to children and families. As part of this work, the Department of Education has made funding available for a two-year programme to develop multidisciplinary approaches to better meet the needs of adopted children and families across England.

The programme aims to create partnerships between regional adoption agencies, integrated care boards, education and health providers, to bring together the knowledge and expertise of different agencies and professionals. The objective for this approach is to streamline the assessment processes for families, enabling them to access the right support for their adopted child, or children, more effectively and efficiently. 

The need for adoption support services has become identified over many years, and Adoption England is committed to improving support for families to ensure each child’s needs are better understood and that pertinent, evidence based, and timely support is available for all.

The latest figures show that in 2022, 2,950 children in England left care via adoption. The needs of adopted children are often complex and multifaceted due to the early adversity, trauma and loss that they may have experienced. Adoption support assessments take into consideration a child’s physical, psychological, cognitive and behavioural health and development and the current pathways within children’s health services do not readily fit the multiple needs that adopted children may have. To do so requires input and sharing expertise from a range of services and disciplines.

This programme aims to overcome these challenges by bringing a range of professionals together as early as possible in a child’s adoption journey to provide a holistic assessment of a child’s needs, with better support for families and new pathways created for children who need additional support from within the NHS. It is also hoped that each project will build partnerships with Virtual Schools to improve adopted children’s experiences within education.

Each of the seven local projects will explore and develop innovative multidisciplinary and multiagency services for adopted children, young people and their families while building lasting relationships between adoption agencies, the health and education sector and local authorities. Each project will be evaluated independently by The Institute of Public Care (IPC) at Oxford Brookes University, partnered with Cardiff University and the University of East Anglia. The evaluation will help to assess the impact, benefits and challenges of these new approaches from the perspective of the children and families who have or are receiving multidisciplinary support through existing models, and from the children and families receiving multidisciplinary support through one of the seven funded models across the country.

Sarah Johal, Adoption England Strategic Lead said: “This programme is a big step in the right direction for us to get a better understanding of how agencies can more effectively and efficiently support adopted children and families if they have a range of professionals around the table who work together to assess the child’s needs and provide a more direct route to the best form of support. We know that adopted children often have multiple needs and adoptive parents report having a poor experience of accessing timely support and help. Our hope is that these projects will build long-term relationships across health, education and children’s services with a clear access point for adoptive families to find the help and support at the right time. One of the aims of this programme is to develop evidence-based support and care pathways with health providers for children who have experienced neglect and trauma which can then be scaled up to meet the needs of other groups of children who are more likely to experience trauma and early adversity.

She continued: “We want to bring these different disciplines together to help skill up the professional network surrounding adoptive families and assist them to better understand and respond to the needs of families experiencing difficulties. This could have a ripple effect as families’ access to and experience of accessing help and support is improved, and the real hope is that adopted families tell us that the quality of life of their adopted child or children and family improves. We will be learning as we go with each of the projects, and the evaluation will be key in helping us to understand what’s working, and how, in the future, we might be able to roll out more multidisciplinary projects across the country to ensure every adopted family receives the same level of care.”

The seven funded projects include:

North East

Adopt North East, Adoption Tees Valley, Adopt Coast to Coast in partnership with the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board aim to create a team of specialists with knowledge, skills, experience and interests relevant to the delivery of high-quality multidisciplinary assessment and support of adopted children and their families. The team will work with children who are between 4 - 11 years with a request for adoption support for neurodiversity and/or attachment and trauma behaviours which have resulted in difficulties with education, peer relations and at home that, without intervention, are likely to escalate in severity and complexity.

Adopt South

Adopt South is working in partnership with Southampton University to create a multidisciplinary service to allow families to receive the correct timely service that holistically considers children’s needs and offers families specialist and streamlined support.  The aim of the project is to find ways to share knowledge from the different psychology perspectives on supporting child development. By working collaboratively together, the project plans to strengthen the knowledge and resource across teams who are supporting families both before and after adoption order, as well as birth families. This will include reflective supervision spaces, staff workshops and accessibility to a wide range of resources including podcasts, films, reading material and links.

North West

Adoption Counts, Adoption Now, Together for Adoption, Adoption in Merseyside and Adoption Lancashire & Blackpool are working together to create a multiagency model with a North West reach to benefit children and adopters across four regional adoption agencies. The service will provide assessment, consultation and therapeutic CAMHS and educational psychology services for adopted children, their parents, carers, and social workers.  The model will include support from an occupational therapist for children with sensory processing issues. The service sits alongside universal adoption services that support the child and their family and is primarily an assessment, training, and consultation service.

Adoption East Midlands

Adoption East Midlands is working with local Virtual Schools, Education Psychology Services and Nottinghamshire Youth Service to develop a regional, multidisciplinary team and service offer bringing together professional expertise to assess the holistic needs of children, young people and families at the early stages of placement, families with more complex needs and young people on the edge of care. The services will provide a single referral, assessment and planning process as well as easier access to universal and specialist services. In addition, the project will be working with a local youth service to provide a regional response to those young people who are at high risk of family breakdown or have other additional risk factors.

Adoption Partnership South East

Adoption Partnership South East is working to expand the existing in-house therapeutic service from one local authority area across the whole regional adoption agency. The therapy team works alongside the social work adoption support teams, providing multidisciplinary support for children and families. In addition, the project aims to improve the partnership between social care, education, and health, to establish a knowledgebase and better understanding of the complex needs of adopted children. 

One Adoption South Yorkshire

One Adoption South Yorkshire is working in partnership with the local Integrated Care Board to develop initial support services for children who may be affected by foetal alcohol spectrum disorder including the provision of practical advice and assistance to schools and parents. The project will produce a specialist protocol for the initial assessment of children and an effective education plan, supported by our commissioned Educational Psychology team, to meet the specific needs of these children.

Adopt Thames Valley

Adoption Thames Valley is working in partnership with Oxfordshire County Council ATTACH Team and local Virtual Schools to create a multidisciplinary therapeutic team to provide services for complex needs including educational, psychological and sensory integration. The service will bring together the knowledge and expertise of different agencies and professionals to identify the individual needs of children/young people and their parents and carers, to provide support, and to triage mental health referrals where appropriate. 

For more information please visit: https://adoptionengland.co.uk/professionals/multidisciplinary-approaches or to find out more about each of the projects, contact eva.booth@nationaladoption.leeds.gov.uk

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For editorial enquiries please contact Communications Consultant Beth O’Sullivan at beth_osullivan@outlook.com

Adoption England

Adoption England is a collaboration of regional adoption agencies (RAAs) working together with a small central team working nationally, aiming to improve adoption practice and develop support and services to better meet the needs of children and families. Adoption England receives funding from the Department for Education and works in partnership with all agencies involved with adoption in England, including voluntary adoption agencies and local authorities, as well as specialised adoption charities and third sector services.

Adoption England’s vision is for every child with a plan for adoption to find a safe and loving home, in a timely manner, with all adoption agencies delivering high-quality services for children and families. Our goals are set into 5 key areas:

1. Children are found permanent and loving homes in a timely way
2. Children have good quality care, a good understanding of their identity, a sense of belonging and stability within their adoptive family
3. Adopted children and families get help and support when they need it 
4. Children, adoptive and birth parents have an influence in the services provided nationally and regionally
5. Professionals understand the profound impact that being in care and adoption has on children’s physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.

For more information please visit: https://adoptionengland.co.uk/