Campaigning
While Adoption UK is primarily a membership organisation providing support services for prospective adopters and adoptive parents, it also carries out a representational role in promoting the concerns and interests of adoptive families to national and local government and other executives. This page shows some of what we have done during the last 12 months...
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England
January
CAMHS
Following a successful presentation to the MPs and peers of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Fostering in December on early intervention in children’s lives, Adoption UK’s lobbying and campaigning work for 2010 began with efforts to improve Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for adoptive families.
Adoption UK Chief Executive Jonathan Pearce delivered a presentation on adoptive parents’ experiences of CAMHS to a conference in London, with the following key themes:
- The difficulties of dealing ‘day in, day out’ with the extreme, chronic and severe behavioural difficulties of many adopted children.
- The personal impact of those difficulties on parents’ mental and emotional wellbeing, and the effects on health and marriages/partnerships.
- Deep concern over the responses of schools and the educational system towards their children’s mental health difficulties.
- The missed opportunities that various public services had to do something about their children’s difficulties much earlier on, e.g., in care planning or at the time of placement.
- Unresponsive CAMHS, that in many cases were too hard to access, were not “adoption aware” and did not involve parents in their children’s therapeutic support.
- Concerns for the future health and wellbeing of their children, particularly in relation to adult mental health services.
The presentation summarised the conclusions from three focus groups of adoptive parents. It formed part of Adoption UK’s project work with the North London Post Permanent Placement Consortium over the past two years.
Media access to the Family Courts
As part of the Interdisciplinary Alliance for Children, Adoption UK is campaigning against some of the provisions of a new Children, Schools and Families Bill which will potentially allow the media to report on public law cases involving children in care and children being placed for adoption.
The Alliance supports the move to make the family courts more transparent, but believes that this can be done without granting the media direct access to court proceedings, e.g., via publishing anonymised court judgements.
The Alliance has prepared briefings for the parliamentary committees that will be scrutinising the Bill which highlight:
- The likely identification of children and families involved in proceedings, which could threaten the stability of present and future family placements.
- The unwillingness that many children and young people have expressed about participating fully in proceedings if they know that the media are present.
- Delays to court proceedings, in order to resolve issues around the reporting of cases.
Adoption UK is also part of a Children’s Commissioner’s research project, conducted by Oxford University, which is gathering children and young people’s views on media access to the courts.
An interim report in January found that children and young people would be reluctant to testify in court if they knew the media were present, and that they have concerns about being bullied, if information about their cases and histories found its way into the public domain.
Adoption pay and leave
Adoption UK has responded to a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) consultation on plans to extend paternity leave to those in work.
Although not the direct focus of the consultation, Adoption UK’s response raised the related issue of the disparity between adoption pay/leave and maternity pay/leave, which unfairly discriminates against adopters. Jonathan Pearce also met with DBIS officials to raise this issue.
December
Adoption UK gave a presentation to MPs, peers and members of the Adoption and Fostering All Party Parliamentary Group at Westminster. The presentation tackled the effects of failing to intervene soon enough in children’s lives, the realities of adoptive family life and the need for high quality adoption support services for adoptive families.
Jonathan Pearce was accompanied by two adopters, who provided powerful and compelling cases studies on the damage and delays experienced by their children, and the consequences of these acts and inactions, and the long-term effects on the children and their adoptive family.
November
Adoption UK drew attention to disparity between adoption pay/leave and maternity pay and leave, by responding to a consultation by the government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Download the response below:
Additional Paternity Leave and Pay consultation - Adoption UK response
October
Openness and transparency in family court proceedings – Schools and Safeguarding Bill
Adoption UK has joined an alliance of children’s, families’ and legal organisations opposed to the Ministry of Justice’s plans on media access/reporting restrictions in family court proceedings.
Jonathan Pearce, also attended the first meeting of the Children’s Commissioner’s Advisory Group on this matter, which is planning to carry out research into children’s views on the proposals.
It followed a September meeting at the Ministry of Justice, with the Briitsh Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) and the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA), for a preview of plans to introduce new legislation in the next parliamentary session (starting in November 2009) to change the current reporting restrictions and allow media access to, family law cases. This would mean allowing media access to private (e.g. divorce cases) and public law family cases (e.g. care and adoption proceedings), and allowing accredited journalists to report on currently confidential reports and findings.
The government argues that the media should be able to attend court proceedings as a proxy for the public and to provide accountability for a system that was suffering from loss of public confidence – a response, in part, to media reports suggesting the care system was operating a secret, target-driven operation to remove children from their birth families and place them for adoption.
Adoption UK has concerns about confidentiality in the adoption system: social services, the health system, the police, the courts, and others, offer numerous ways of revealing the identity and location of adoptive placements. The charity is concerned that opening up care and adoption proceedings will increase the chances of this happening, not simply through the reporting of court cases, but that the information either becomes available or easily identifies children and families (particularly in local and ethnic minority communities) and is passed on by word of mouth. For adoptive parents caught up in public law proceedings, should their identities and family locations be revealed, there is a real risk of the new adoptive family being destabilised.
Revised National Minimum Standards for Adoption Agencies and Adoption Support Agencies
The government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has published a consultation on the above, which closes on 17 December 2009. Adoption UK will be responding in due course.
Choice for Families: Additional Paternity Leave and Pay: Consultation on Draft Regulations
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has published this consultation, which closes on 20 November 2009. Although not an issue expressly covered by the consultation, Adoption UK will be using its response to request that the disparity between adoptive parents and pregnant/expectant mothers in relation to adoption and maternity pay and leave be addressed. The lack of an equivalent to maternity allowance for self-employed adopters will also be raised. For further information or to contribute to this work, please contact Director, Jonathan Pearce.
August
Adoption UK worked with the DCSF, and BAAF and the CVAA, about the department’s research report on ‘Adoption and the Interagency Fee’. The report found a significant difference between the true costs of placing children for adoption and what local authorities will pay to voluntary adoption agencies for the placement and support of those children.
July
Jonathan worked with the DCSF’s ContactPoint team in trying to work out the best way to handle adopted children’s records for the new government database that, in time, will contain the contact details of all children in England.
He attended the Early Adopter Focus Group in Windermere, Cumbria, on 1 July 2009, speaking with the regional ContactPoint Officers who are involved in the north-west pilot. He outlined Adoption UK’s concerns and the issues for adoptive families, and has been in recent discussions with the DCSF about how it will work for families once the database is fully operational, including suggestions on relevant publicity material for adoptive families
June
The final Stage 5 report of the review panel for the Sexual Orientation Regulations and the Catholic adoption and fostering agencies has been submitted to the Prime Minister. It highlighted that since the introduction of the Sexual Orientation Regulations in April, one of the thirteen agencies has closed and two more are planning to do so in the future.
As part of Channel 4’s season on the care system, representatives from Adoption UK took part in a debate at Channel 4 studios.
Jonathan Pearce and policy advisor Lynda Gilbert gave evidence to the Conservative party’s review of adoption policy, led by shadow minister for children Tim Loughton MP.
They raised four key areas of adoption policy:
1. More adopters needed to parent traumatised children from the care system – Adoption UK recommended making recruiting adopters a national priority, ensuring adoptions are fully supported, and establishing a ‘central clearing house’ for potential adopters whose interest in adoption is dismissed by local agencies exercising ‘local discretion’
2. Improving adoption outcomes - to prevent adoptive placements breaking down, Adoption UK suggested early decision-making and action, including court processes, accurate assessment of children’s abilities and developmental needs and high quality support to adoptive families
3. Improvements to adoption support - access to well-funded and knowledgeable adoption support services, better joint working between social services, health and education authorities and across authority areas, more educational support, including giving them the same status as looked after children
4. Local authority funding - if funding for support travelled with the child in the care system, there would be more efficient use of public funding, decision-making would be made genuinely in the interests of the child, rather than due to financial considerations or constraints, and out of area placements would not be blighted by funding issues.
April
An article on an evaluation of Adoption UK’s flagship training programme ‘It’s a Piece of Cake’ has been published in the latest edition of Adoption and Fostering journal. The article highlights how the award-winning training course reflected on Adoption UK’s reputation as a dedicated and exemplary adoption agency. Download the article below:
Cake Journal ArticleMarch
All Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Fostering (Westminster)
Jonathan attended the March meeting, which heard from Judge Donald Hamilton on his experiences as county court judge on adoption. Jonathan raised issues on the wide range of threats to the confidentiality of adoption.
National Adoption Register
A meeting of the National Adoption Register in England and Wales’ Advisory Group (of which Jonathan is a member) took place, to review the Register’s work and provide advice.
Following controversial media coverage of a story about adopting after bereavement, Jonathan was interviewed on Talk Sport Radio and Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour.
February
Ministerial meeting
Both as Chair of the Consortium of Adoption Support Agencies (CASA) and Director of Adoption UK, Jonathan met the Minister responsible for adoption and fostering at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Baroness Delyth Morgan. The meeting aimed to raise the profile of adoption support issues at government level, including the needs of adoptive families and birth families, as well as the profiles of Adoption UK and CASA. Issues covered include:
- The need for the system of adoption support to take the next steps in its development, moving towards meeting families’ expectations and actually providing support services, not just assessments.
- The need for additional funding, expertise and capacity for adoption support services within local authorities.
- Adopted children’s needs are not recognised or prioritised in education services, or in CAMHS.
- The fragility of the independent adoption support sector, which receives no statutory funding and is not properly involved in local authority commissioning frameworks for adoption support. The voluntary sector ends up funding adoption support services out of its own charitable reserves when these should be funded by central or local government.
- The minister and her civil servants accepted the points made, and asked her civil servants to consider what further action to take. Possibilities include:
- The Department working more closely with the key organisations (e.g., Adoption UK, BAAF, Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies and CASA) to address these issues, including promoting the benefits/outcomes of adoption support to local authorities.
- Guidance around the education system is soon to be revised – this could be an opportunity to ensure adopted children are included in the guidance, alongside references to looked after children.
CAMHS
Adoption UK is part of the North London Post Permanent Placement Consortium, which brings together the Tavistock Clinic, the Anna Freud Centre, Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Marlborough Centre, Coram and BAAF. The aim is to develop a consistent approach to the assessment and therapeutic treatment of adopted children. The Consortium is working under a DCSF project grant that will enable it to do this. It includes funding for Adoption UK to convene groups of adopters for the purposes of generating feedback and evaluation on the use of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). The third and last CAMHS focus group was held in March 2009. All three groups were incredibly powerful in terms of the stories and experiences that adopters were able to describe, not just in relation to CAMHS, but also other areas of family support, notably educational services. The focus groups will inform the wider project’s work and it is hoped they will have a major impact on the future development of CAMHS.
Scotland
In September, the bulk of the Adoption and Children Act (Scotland) Act 2007 came into force. Details of the new laws, which, among other things, cover new adoption support requirements for local authority social work departments in Scotland, can be found on the Scottish Government’s website.
It is not clear is what funding and resources the Government will be putting behind the new adoption initiatives, although there may be announcements about this later in the years.
Statutory Guidance on the Act is shortly to be developed: the Scottish Government has commissioned BAAF and the Fostering Network to draft this. Adoption UK will be closely involved in the consultations on the draft guidance and is currently asking the Government to confirm how it will consult on this.
Adoption UK has submitted several responses to the consultations on the draft Regulations to be made to implement the Act in Scotland. Download Adoption UK’s responses to the consultations below:
Support Services and Allowances
Adoptions with a Foreign Element
Adoptions with a Foreign Element - Special Restrictions
Disclosure of Medical Information
Wales
In September, Ann Bell (Development Manager – Wales) and colleagues had a successful meeting with the Children's Commissioner for Wales, Keith Towler, raising the profile of adoptive parenting issues. They called for support for the country’s adoptive families, particularly in the light of increasing numbers of adoptions that are taking place in Wales. Ann is currently carrying out a survey among adopters in Wales, to gather information their support needs and views on adoption. The Commissioner is interested in seeing this when it is published in early 2010.
Adoption UK has also responded to a consultation on the Independent Review Mechanism Fostering and Adoption. Download the consultation document and response below:
IRM Consultation - Adoption UK's response
In February Ann met with a civil servant from the Welsh Assembly Government to discuss the possibility of future work on educational support for adopted and looked after children.
Northern Ireland
In October, Stephen McVey (Development Manager – Northern Ireland) and Jonathan responded to the DHSS&PS’s consultation on the ‘Vetting Requirements in Adoption, Fostering and Private Fostering’. Download the consultation document and response below:
Vetting RequirementsConsultation
Vetting Requirements - Adoption UK's response
At the end of June, Stephen met with officials from the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSS&PS) to discuss Adoption UK’s work, its views on adoption services, to learn more about the forthcoming legislation and also to discuss the tendering process for the future adoption support services that the Department hopes to begin developing shortly.
Also in June, at Stephen’s instigation, the Children’s Commisioner, Patricia Lewsley, met adoptive parents at a support group in Belfast to listen to them directly, to try togain a greater insight into the issues they faced. The meeting was attended by 20 parents, some travelling across the country to tell their stories.
They gave personal accounts of their experiences, telling stories that were often traumatic, showing the lack of support available to adoptive families. Dominant themes were education and health issues, courts, the length of the adoption process and lack of consistency across different trusts. Parents asked Ms Lewsley to challenge the trusts on their inability to provide services. The Commissioners’ Office has said it will explore how the concerns raised can be carried forward.
In March, Stephen met with various MLAs at Stormont to discuss ways to resolve the political impasse around introducing new adoption legislation for Northern Ireland. He also had an unscheduled meeting with the Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey, on the same issue, however, it remains unclear how the legislation will become a reality.
At the end of 2008, Stephen and colleagues met with representatives from the Department for Health, Social Services & Public Safety to discuss the specifications for a regional independent, birth parent mediation service, and a regional model for post adoption contact mediation and facilitation service and a therapeutic support service. A presentation was made on the work of Adoption UK, and its views on the key parts of an effective support service for adoptive families.