Agenda item

Consideration was given to a report of the Head of Service - Children Looked

After and Care Leavers which presented the Adoption Annual Report and an overview of the Adoption Scorecard for 2017 to update the Committee on the performance of the Adoption Service in relation to the Adoption Leadership Board performance indicators. The report also provided an update on local, regional and national developments in adoption.

Members were informed that since the government’s focus on Adoption Reform and the development of the Adoption Leadership Board Scorecard in 2012, an annual briefing had been presented to the Committee to provide an overview of Oldham’s performance in relation to the Adoption Leadership Board performance indicators, as well as an update for Members on local,

regional and national developments in adoption.

In line with the Adoption Reform Agenda, Oldham had joined with Bolton, Bury, Blackburn with Darwen, Rochdale and Tameside to develop a Regional Adoption Agency (RAA), Adoption NoW, which went live in November 2017. The Annual Adoption Report provided an overview of the progress of Oldham’s children through the adoption process, Adopter Recruitment and Adoption Support.

The Adoption Scorecard measured performance against a set of indicators over a 3 year period. The Adoption Scorecard for 2018 had not yet been published and as a result, it was not possible to provide up-to-date comparisons with Statistical Neighbours and England averages.

Members noted highlights of Oldham’s performance included:-

·       35 children had been adopted in 2018 compared with 25 children in 2017.

·       The cohort of children adopted included a high proportion of children considered hard to place due to age, ethnicity, health needs or being part of a sibling group and this would inevitably have an impact on adoption timescales for children.

·       The A1 indicator measured the average time over a 3 year period between a child becoming looked after and moving in with the adoptive family, for children who had been adopted. Oldham’s performance had improved from 469 days in 2016 to 447 in 2017. The 3 year average to March 2018 had further improved to 430 days and was

only slightly above the Adoption Leadership Board target of 426 days.

·       The A2 indicator measured the length of time between the local authority obtaining a Placement Order to matching a child with adopters, for children who had been adopted. Oldham’s performance improved from 223 days in 2016 to 213 days in 2017. In 2018, performance in relation to the A2 indicator had deteriorated to 265

days. This was 144 days above the Adoption Leadership Board target of 121 days.

·       The Regional Adoption Agency had increased the pool of adopters available to Oldham children.

·       Oldham performed better than the England average for almost all Adoption Leadership Board measures in 2017, and better than its Statistical Neighbours against the indicators which measured adoption timescales.

Members asked for and received clarification on the following:-

Recruitment of BME adopters – One of the aims of the RAA was to become a centre of excellence in such recruitment, especially recruiting from Asian backgrounds. This would increase the number of BME families for the RAA and enable them to be offered to other areas. The RAA was also very skilled in finding families for hard to place children

Progress – there had been significant progress in the 12 months the authority had been in the RAA. The main identified risk in the future was around the uncertainty of the continuation of the adoption support fund past 2020. 

Ofsted inspection outcome – very positive with regards to both fostering and adoption. Determining lines of responsibility for performance between the individual councils and the RAA was an ongoing area of work.

Adoption of multiple children by single parents – anyone could adopt. All applicants underwent assessment and the outcome of that would determine how many children could be adopted.

Dividing siblings – only if a split was beneficial especially where there was no sibling relationship. Where there was a relationship, every effort would be made to keep them together which may mean they took longer to place.

Nationwide adoption – children could be adopted  anywhere, however the target was to place 60% of the children within the RAA. This year the target had been exceeded, with 68% being placed within the RAA.

RESOLVED that:-

The report be noted.

A further report be provided in Summer 2020.