Annual Reports 2023/2024
Read Adoption England's annual reports to find out more about our work in the adoption sector
Download the Adoption England Annual Report 23/24
Foreword - Sarah Johal MBE
The past year has been challenging for children, families and adoption agencies. The tightening of public sector finances has put immense pressure on individuals, local authorities, health services and third-sector organisations. The Ofsted thematic inspection of regional adoption agencies report in December 2023 highlighted extensive delays for many families accessing adoption support. This is due to a combination of increased demand for services, exacerbated by the recent pandemic and resource issues within agencies.
The insufficiency of adopters available to meet the number and needs of children for whom we are family finding remains a challenge. A combination of economic, social, procedural and personal factors contribute to this issue. Alongside this, we must recognise that our social contract with adopters is changing. We expect adopters to continue accessing support and help to meet the multiple, diverse, and lifelong needs of their children. Additionally, supporting children to maintain meaningful connections with their birth family is crucial in modern adoption.
Despite these challenges, Adoption England is determined to address the issues through collaboration and partnership working. In this third annual report, we outline our programme of work and highlight the key achievements during the year.
The activities within this report show the commitment of staff, adopters, adopted people and birth parents who continue to work together to develop firm foundations, innovate, test different approaches to practice, and develop better support for adopted people, adopters and birth families. Over the last year, we have focused on strengthening practice. A series of national practice standards, based on research and evidence, has been developed and implemented. The early permanence and matching standards are now available. The new standards around the adopter journey and supporting important relationships for children will be shared with the sector in the coming months, and the implementation will be supported by a comprehensive learning programme.
The shared learning within the communities of practice and the regional projects across early permanence, matching, multidisciplinary approaches and commissioning, are providing positive examples of the impact these approaches can have on improving outcomes for children and their families.
In March 2024, we launched the Adoption England strategy, bringing together the views of professionals across the sector and experts by experience. Together, we are building a vision of how to modernise adoption to better meet the needs of children and families. Adoption England is committed to reporting on the progress towards these outcomes moving forward.
Key Achievements
The Stories We Bring with Us
A new film commissioned by Adoption England and produced by PAC-UK shares the stories of adopted people. This film can be used by agencies during the training of new prospective adopters. The film resources can be found on our website.
The Missing Piece
An Adoption England commissioned film shares the voices of birth parents, helping potential adopters understand the difficult position birth parents are often in. The film resources can be found on our website.
Activity Days
Adoption England funded 8 National Activity Days (delivered by Coram-i) and 7 pan-regional Activity Days (delivered by 4 RAAs) to increase matching opportunities for children. These events generated 93 expressions of interest.
Culture Change in Maintaining Relationships
The programme, led by the University of East Anglia, started in May 2023 and will run until April 2025. To date, 14 free open access webinars have been held, with a total of 5197 people signing up. These webinars involve experts by experience and explore key areas of how culture change can be achieved for children when staying in touch with birth relatives or those important to them. There are now over 160 Culture Change champions across Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs), Voluntary Adoption Agencies (VAAs), Local Authorities (LAs), as well as some cross-region independents and judiciary.
Early Permanence
The proportion of Early Permanence adoptions has increased since 2020/21. In 2022/23, 20% of all adoptions were Early Permanence adoptions, and analysis of the Q2 2023/24 data indicates that this has increased to 23%.
Training
- 14 sessions of Agency Decision Makers training were delivered in partnership with CoramBAAF, reaching 161 people across the country. Further support is provided through bi-monthly drop-in sessions.
- 3 sessions of Judiciary training through Judicial College were delivered in partnership with CoramBAAF, to improve consistency and understanding around Early Permanence.
- Staff College delivered the Black and Asian Leadership Initiative (BALI) programme for global majority staff within the adoption sector and in partnership with 4 RAAs, delivered the ‘Just Heart, Just Home’ programme to raise cultural awareness and support for global majority children.
Adoption England Website
The new website provides a much-needed platform to share information about adoption resources, training materials and news from the sector, with a library for professionals to share and develop practice. On average, 3,400 people visit the site every month of which 3,300 on average are new users.
FamilyConnect
Adoption England is piloting the first nationally commissioned service with Family Action and PAC-UK to provide a specialist
telephone advice line through their website. This service supports adult adoptees, their descendants and birth relatives who wish to reconnect with their relatives.
Openness in Adoption – Time to Change the Approach
Over 500 people attended the first hybrid conference to kick-start the Culture Change project and raise awareness of the importance of maintaining relationships for children that are adopted.