UK adoption overhaul planned

The government is overhauling the way prospective parents who want to adopt a child are selected to try and speed up the assessment process. Tim Loughton, the Children’s Minister, has asked a group of experts including representatives from the sector, local government and adoption experts to draw up a new process to recruit, train and select adoptive parents.
The present system is criticised because it is slow and unnecessarily bureaucratic with the risk that potential adoptive parents are put off by the delays and procedures. Potentially suitable parents are often turned away because they are not the right ethnic match, are overweight or have smoke

Also, despite the increasing number of children waiting in care to be adopted, those seeking to adopt can wait up to a year or more to be approved as adoptive parents.
The panel that has been drawn together will work with Martin Narey, the government’s adoption advisor, and new recommendations are expected in March on a new system to be introduced next year.
The panel will include the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, the British Association of Adoption and Fostering, Adoption UK and the Association of Directors of Children's Services.
Loughton said: “The assessment process for people wanting to adopt is painfully slow, repetitive and ineffective. Dedicated social workers are spending too long filling out forms instead of making sound, common-sense judgements about someone's suitability to adopt.
"Children are waiting too long because we are losing many potentially suitable adoptive parents to a system which doesn't welcome them and often turns them away at the door. I am determined to change this.”
Among the areas the panel will be looking at are better recruitment processes; streamlining the training; reducing the bureaucracy on information collected about prospective adopters; introducing set timetables for training and looking at whether new monitoring or evaluation mechanisms are needed.
Narey added: “The more I have visited local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies over the past few months, the more exercised I have become about a parental assessment process which is not fit for purpose.
"It meanders along, it is failing to keep pace with the number of children cleared for adoption, and it drives many outstanding couples to adopt from abroad.”