Adoption Update
To receive an update from the Assistant Director for Children and Families on Adoption and Permanency Activity. To Follow
Minutes:
The committee received a verbal update from the Deputy Director for Children and Families about Adoption and the new action plan from government to speed up and instigate more use of the adoption process. The government currently used data to rank boroughs performance in the speed and number of adoptions being made. In 2011 Haringey was ranked 123 out of 152 boroughs with an average of 63% of adoptions being made within 12 months of the decision to adopt over the previous 3 years. The committee noted that this figure had already improved and the council were currently performing at 75% against the national average of 74%.
The committee were informed that there would be an introduction of performance thresholds, set to monitor the overall time of the journey through the adoption process.
All local authorities would be receiving a performance scorecard to help profile and track progress. The committee were provided with an example of its likely content and would be provided with the final version of the score card when issued by government.
The chair commented on the need for the service to monitor any counter effects of the action plan such as: a lower number of children being placed in the adoption process because a placement may not be found within the set thresholds or if there is an increase in placement breakdowns through the process being made shorter. Officers agreed that it would be important to prioritise considering all the adoption case specifics rather than meeting targets.
The committee noted that the court will in future ratify the care plans rather than the adoption review panel. It was felt that the Adoption panel should continue these quality assurance measures with updates on cases being considered at their meetings so that they can continue to provide independent analysis on cases going forward.
The committee continued to consider information on the number of children and their age range currently progressing through the adoption process. It was noted that once the family was identified that the local authority would need to await the Court placement order before placing the child with the family. The family would then need to place the adoption order.
RESOLVED
That the adoption update and sample scorecard be emailed to all committee members after the meeting.