This section contains information on adoption for practitioners working with children and families. General information about adoption can be found on the Directgov website. Information about intercountry adoption can be found in the intercountry adoption section.
The Prime Minister has made it very clear that improving the lives of children in care is a national priority. The Adoption Action Plan published in March 2012 sets out a range of proposal to help more children for whom adoption is in their best interests to find stable, loving and permanent homes through adoption more quickly. If this is to happen the adoption system needs to work much more effectively and efficiently.
Many dedicated people are already working very hard to drive improvements. We are working equally hard at the national level. Work to implement the Family Justice Review, for example, will be critical in helping to reduce delays. But at the local level what is really striking is how variable performance is a. For example, the average time from a child who goes on to be adopted entering care to he or she moving in his or her adoptive family ranged from 14 months to 34 months in different local authority areas.
We have therefore published detailed Children in Care and Adoption Performance Tables, which show, against 15 key indicators, how each local authority is performing in relation to services for children in care. In addition we have published Adoption Scorecards which focus on three key indicators of the timeliness of the adoption system in each local authority area, and include a range of contextual information. Local authorities can use these Scorecards to understand how they compare to other authorities. The Department for Education will use the Scorecards to identify potential issues for investigation, or good practice which can be shared with other areas.
