Plymouth praised for adoption scorecard results

Plymouth has been praised for being one of only 36 councils across the country to meet tough new government standards for adoption by continuing to reduce the amount of time children wait for new families.

This year’s national adoption scorecards from the Department for Education, which compare the performance of council adoption services across the country, show steady year-on-year improvement in Plymouth.

Plymouth City Council’s adoption service today received a letter from Edward Timpson, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families congratulating the team on their results and encouraging them to continue to strive for improvement.

Alison Barker, Adoption Manager, said: “I am absolutely delighted that we’ve been praised for being one of only 36 councils across the country to meet new government standards for adoption. We’ve shown a year on year improvement in reducing the waiting times for those children in Plymouth who desperately need to grow up in a permanent family of their own. We are determined to do all we can to give children the best possible start in life. Although we have received praised we know the hard work will continue to maintain the standards for Plymouth’s children in care.”

The average length of time children waiting for adoption in the city reduced by 24 days, an improvement from 601 to 577 days and this was mirrored by the average length of care proceedings reducing by 6 weeks from 55 to 49 weeks – now two weeks below the national average.     

Councillor Nicky Williams, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “We are thrilled we’ve reduced waiting times for those children needing adoption in Plymouth. Our performance against the scorecard targets shows we meet each of the required thresholds. Our priority is always to ensure that children are matched and placed with adopters who will best meet their needs, and this will always take precedent, but we appreciate the importance of swift action when planning a child’s future.

“Our figures in the most recent adoption scorecards show that we are improving year on year. The length of time we now take from receiving court authority for adoption and actually matching a child to an adoptive family has reduced dramatically by 47 days. So children are meeting their new families approximately seven weeks sooner than they previously would have. New data released this year shows we have approved a high level of adopters and as of the 31 March 2013 we had 43 approved, compared to 23 - the average of our statistical neighbours. 

“It’s really important that the children who come into care, whose plan is for adoption, are moved through the process as quickly as possible. We continue to strive to make sure all our children are matched with suitable adopters, to enable them to settle in a new family. We’re particularly pleased that we continue to match a high number of children over the age of five with adoptive families (9%) compared to the national average of just 4%. We firmly believe that all our children will thrive in a permanent family rather than staying in the care system.

“We are committed to maintaining our high level of adoptions from care and are working hard to continue to reduce our waiting times. We have very good working relationships with the courts locally and continue to recruit adopters throughout the South West.

“Although we are delighted we have received another good score card we are never complacent and are always looking for ways to improve our service for the children we look after.

“We expect the number of children needing adoption in Plymouth will increase in the future, as referrals to children’s social care remain high, after a number of high profile cases in other parts of the country. We’re currently looking for people interested in adopting sibling groups or children with disabilities, but we are of course keen to hear from anyone thinking about adoption. We’d urge anyone interested in adoption to visit our brand new website www.adoptforplymouth.co.uk or call 01752 306800.”