Surrey County Council and Adoption

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I am raising the anonymous case of a small group of parents—potentially—who started an adoption procedure with Surrey county council at the same time. I am not happy with the procedure, and nor are the individual set of parents whom I will talk about. I must say at the beginning that I am very supportive of the Government’s moves to speed up and sort out the adoption procedures. Perhaps they ought to be grabbing Surrey county council by the back of the neck and shaking it.

This case—the one I am choosing to talk about—involves a married couple in my constituency. They are professional people, they own their own home in a small village in the constituency and they are near an excellent primary school, which feeds one of the best secondary schools. The mother has become a full-time mum for the two little sisters they have adopted. Put bluntly, after an appalling start in life things are looking good for those two little girls.

The adoptive parents expressed an interest in adopting to Surrey county council at an adoption meeting in November 2010. They submitted a formal application. A meeting was held with a social worker in January 2011. Prior to approval to progress, the couple attended an initial four-day training course in 2011 with seven other couples. So we are talking about eight couples, potentially—this is not a single-couple case.

On the fourth day of the four-day training course, the couple I am talking about were shown details of some children who were available for adoption. However, it soon became apparent that Surrey county council should not have done that, as its procedures had another eight months to run before approval. My constituents—this couple—looked at the list of children’s details in late March 2011, as produced by Surrey county council, and were attracted towards adopting two young sisters. One was aged five, going on six, and the other was aged two, going on three. At that stage, the two little girls had been in care for two years. On that final day of the training course, all the couples were told that Surrey county council would fast-track an application, as we would wish, if a suitable match was identified during the preparation for adoption. However, in my opinion, or at least in the opinion of the couple, Surrey county council seemed incapable of speeding up any progress at all. In fact, looking at the case in retrospect, the council did the opposite.

At the end of the first stage, the couple were assigned a social worker to take them through the preparation stage; that was in late March 2011. They first met their assigned social worker at the start of May 2011—two months’ delay. By early summer, the couple had started to express serious interest in adopting the two little girls, having seen their child permanence reports and later a short DVD of the children. As a result of that, the social worker agreed to start to run the adoption approval process, so as to approve the couple as adopters. It was agreed that the matching panel process would run in parallel. In October 2011, six months later, the couple met the children’s social worker for the first time, and reconfirmed their wish to proceed to adopt these two little girls, so that the processes could continue in parallel. At that stage, there seemed to be mutual agreement that, given the girls’ age and the length of time they had spent in care, the process should be moved quickly.

The adoption panel was set for early November 2011—12 months’ delay. The matching panel was expected to take place in late November 2011, but no date was set. The couple were deeply concerned that, at that time, their social worker had still not interviewed the required three referees from the six who had written reports about them as potential adoptive parents. In October 2011, as the distance between the meetings got longer, the social worker realised that she could not complete the work in the time required and the adoption panel meeting was slid back another 10 days.

After 14 separate daytime meetings, each one lasting between two and three hours, the social worker prepared a report and took the potential parents and the report to the panel in late November 2011. Appallingly, the panel decided that there were some basic deficiencies in the report. For example, the social worker was required to interview three referees but she had only interviewed two and, to make matters worse, still presented the report.

The panel therefore felt that it had to defer the case. To make matters even worse, the panel felt that, among other things, the social worker’s report contained too many references to the specific children—the two girls—instead of fictitious ones, which apparently was the normal procedure. Again, that was a Surrey county council problem.

As a result of that, the panel was apparently not confident that the couple were a suitable match, but that was entirely based on the inadequate report, and so we went backwards. As I am sure the Minister will understand, the adoptive couple were slightly upset—to put it mildly—as the panel was supposed to be judging their suitability as generic adopters, but in fact the couple had been led down the road of considering specific individual girls.

Things got worse. First, the social worker went off sick with stress and disappeared for nine months. A week after the social worker went off sick, the couple met the social worker’s manager, who apologised for the inadequate report. I find that somewhat strange, because the manager is ultimately responsible for the report before it is progressed with. However, the manager did not appear to notice that.

The couple were told to drop the match prospects with the two little girls, which was very upsetting. There were three further meetings with the manager, written submissions from the couple and so on. The matter proceeded on, so that the panel decision was brought forward to late January 2012 and was positive.

I find it extraordinary, but at that stage the couple had difficulty persuading the manager working with them that it was appropriate for them to adopt siblings. The couple were assigned a new social worker and told to look for a new potential match. In March 2012, they discovered from other potential adopters that the two little girls—

16:35

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:40

On resuming—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

We have been absent for seven minutes, so the sitting will continue until 5.7 pm.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I will scurry, Mr Bayley.

In March 2012, the adoptive couple discovered that their potential adoptees—the two little girls—were still on the list for adoption. They had been offered to other potential adopters but not accepted, for some reason. On that understanding, the couple approached the manager. They were told by the manager, once again, to forget the match and move on, even though Surrey county council had no alternative options for the children. Thanks to delays, at this stage the eldest girl was now nearly seven. At no time during the process were my constituents ever informed why they may or may not have been an unsuitable match.

In April 2012, my constituents ran out of patience with Surrey county council. They discovered, through Adoption UK, that there was an adoption exchange day in London, where a large number of adoptive agencies were present with the profiles of children for adoption. They discovered that it would be helpful to bring along a short biography to give out. This they prepared themselves, only to discover on arrival at the event that it should have been prepared with the assistance of Surrey county council. They still attended. Different Surrey county council staff were present, to whom they explained this long difficulty. They were assured that the staff were somewhat appalled.

Fortunately, on a Friday evening in April, the same manager—the one who had been there all along and who originally took them through the adoption panel—rang to say that she had had further discussions with colleagues. She said that Surrey county council now supported placing the two youngsters with them. The next matching panel took place in June 2012, which was a further delay of two months. Introductions were to commence in early July, but there was another two-week delay. To save the Minister the arithmetic, that was some 16 months after the first possible approach, after having first seen the details of the little girls. The two sisters latterly moved in with the adoptive parents, because of success, in August 2012. By this stage, the two girls had been in care for more than three years and had lived with two sets of foster carers.

Bad though that is, there is more. First, there was a shambolic lack of clarity over the contact arrangements with the birth parents. In broad summary, there were two differing opinions from two social workers. One social worker wanted up to six contacts a year for the birth parents with the girls, the other wanted no contact. Decisions were made, undone and remade. Confusion and upset reigned for the wee girls, for the adopting parents and for the birth mother. The final decision was no contact, which was backed by the court but opposed by the birth mother.

Surrey social workers decided at this stage that they needed to support the new combined family once the children had moved in with their adoptive parents-to-be. In September, the two girls were about to start at their new school. The elder of the sisters was going through a difficult settling-in stage. In its wisdom, children’s services decided that the mother would need more help, which was accepted. A social worker was allocated to the new family on a weekly basis, after school. She was, I understand, young and clearly inexperienced. Whatever advice was sought, or when changes were suggested in the strategy for caring for the children, she had to rush back to the manager, again, and return with the advice the following week. This support was so pathetic and inadequate that, by mutual consent, these support arrangements were shelved.

In addition to this inadequate support, the adoptive mother received visits every three weeks from the children’s social worker and from the parents’ own social worker—not together, but separately. The two social workers did not agree with each other’s approach. This, of course, made life challenging and every visit from the children’s social worker resulted in a period of unsettled behaviour from the children, who blamed the adoptive mother for the move. Fortunately, Surrey did something right. It bought in SafeBase, an external specialist organisation, which supported and helped the parents.

In January 2013, when the children were quite settled—they had got through their first Christmas with their new parents and the adoption process was about to begin—for some unknown reason, the children’s social worker decided that she needed to start visiting once a week to work on the children’s life story books. Why she needed to do this in conjunction, and in close proximity, with the children, I cannot fathom, and the timing was bad. Of course, predictably, that weekly visit, including pulling information together for the life story, had the immediate effect of unsettling the children yet again, as the social worker raked up their past on a weekly basis. That persisted for more than a month, until the social worker was signed off sick with a broken wrist—so they could not inflict other visits. The frequency of visits reduced and a semblance of normality started to return, and there was progress through to what one would consider proper normality.

To add to the problems, the children’s social worker delayed the commencement of the court process for the adoption by almost four weeks, by failing to provide the parents with the address of the birth parents. This was only resolved by going back to the manager again. To further aggravate the situation, the first court hearing was adjourned because the judge was not satisfied that adequate efforts had been made by Surrey county council to contact the birth parents, and he delayed the adoption by another six weeks.

In the middle of all that, the children were told about the contradiction of the contact with their birth parents. That was done by the children’s social worker in March 2013. I understand that it went through well.

The children are now adopted and in the home. I have met them, although the children do not realise it. It is understandable that Surrey county council children’s services department was concerned about how the parents would cope with the demands, but it seemed to make it worse at every stage. The adoption is now complete, and I should like the procedures that Surrey county council went through to be looked at, preferably independently, by somebody outside, if the Minister—if he acts—can persuade Surrey county council of that.

I have had dealings with Surrey county council’s social services in the past, and it was like banging my head on a brick wall. It shelters behind data protection, and progress is zero. A group of potential parents came together in November 2010, and I hope they can have their cases briefly looked at as a paper exercise and that the individual parents can then be interviewed, because if social services continue as they have been in Surrey, we are doomed when it comes to helping those children.

The children are now in what I know is a happy home. I wish them all the very best, but I must warn the parents, as a parent with adult children: just wait till those wee girls are teenagers. Then the fun starts.

16:50

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing this important debate. I know from his contributions to the Commons stages of the Children and Families Bill that he shares my determination to speed up and improve the adoption system from start to finish.

It is a shame that this debate has come about because of the catalogue of distressing experiences that my hon. Friend’s constituents have had with Surrey’s adoption service. It is pleasing to hear that, despite those problems, his constituents have persevered and are now the proud parents of two little girls who now have the stable, loving family home that they so desperately needed. I am sure that he will understand that I am unable to comment or intervene on an individual case—such cases are always best dealt with locally, where the circumstances are well known. I can assure him, however, that if his constituents want to provide my officials with permission, I am more than happy to write to the chief executive of Surrey county council to inquire about whether the director of children’s services is aware of their concerns and has any plans to consider them formally in the way that he suggests.

I can very much relate to the many challenges and joys of adoption and the care system that my hon. Friend describes. As he knows, I have two adoptive brothers who are among the more than 80 children, many from incredibly difficult backgrounds, that my family have fostered over 30 years. That clearly was not always easy, but I came to treasure seeing how love, stability and routine helped my brothers lay down roots, grow and eventually thrive. I know first hand just how life changing adoption can be.

We know that the permanency of adoption provides vulnerable children with one of the strongest foundations for a brighter future, so it is right that we do all that we can to remove the barriers and blockages that keep children in need and prospective parents apart.

As my hon. Friend’s constituents found, the existing system is clearly far too often failing to deliver for many people. Chronic delays mean that children in care wait on average two years—in the worst cases, three years—to be adopted, and some children are never adopted. Currently, just over 4,500 children are waiting to move in with their new family, and we need around 2,000 more adopters than are currently approved to meet that demand, with an extra 700 adopters needed each year to meet future demand, which is a 25% growth in the system’s capacity. We need not only more adopters but more adopters such as his constituents who can welcome older children and pairs or groups of siblings into their family. There is no doubt that we face a significant challenge on adopter recruitment.

The hopes of children waiting for a family are draining away all the time. Evidence shows that a child’s chances of adoption are reduced by almost 20% for every year that they spend in care. I am determined to do whatever it takes to change that situation, which is why we are taking action on a number of fronts to speed up and simplify the adoption system. I assure my hon. Friend that that includes significant measures to drive up performance locally.

We have made £150 million available to councils to boost adoption rates, and through adoption scorecards we have strengthened accountability by publishing information on how long it takes each local authority to place children for adoption. Nationally, some local authorities are doing excellent work on adoption, which we must recognise. That work is reflected in the 12% rise in adoptions last year, compared with the year before. Although that is very welcome, performance across the country is still too patchy, which is why we will continue to monitor closely local authorities, including Surrey, through the adoption scorecard and other available data. Where progress gives cause for concern, we will not hesitate to take the appropriate and necessary action.

As well as getting local authorities to raise their game on adoption, there is also increased support for prospective adopters, backed up by the excellent training available from adoption agencies. When I talk to adopters and prospective adopters, one of the many questions that they have, as well as those on the assessment process, is on what happens next. Where does the support come from? What role will the local authority or voluntary adoption agency play in ensuring that the adoption will be successful? The worst thing that can happen to the child is that the adoption is not successful because the right support was not provided at the right time. We need to ensure that we work closely with local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies and other national adoption organisations, so that we can make really good progress by implementing the adoption action plan, by creating the adoption gateway, by reforming regulations to create more streamlined approval processes and by publishing transparent scorecard data on timeliness, so not only officials and politicians but the public and prospective adopters can see the performance of local authorities and so that others can also have a chance to understand how good or bad the performance of their local authority is.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but on paper and from what he is saying, Surrey county council would have appeared to have put in the support and so on. The difficulty is that, looking at it from the outside, it is virtually impossible to tell that that help is a hindrance.

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend makes a key point about the quality of the support that is available. One of the areas on which we are putting more focus is the quality of social work training, and therefore on the standard and quality of social workers who work with families right from the very start, so that they get a better, higher and more consistent level of support, which we know can help to ensure that a placement is successful.

One of the changes that will help push that through is the new inspection regime that Ofsted is introducing, which will bind together both child protection and looked-after children, including adoption, so that there is a much brighter light and a much deeper look at what is happening within children’s services. We owe it to the children whose best future we have decided lies in adoption to provide them with the best opportunity at the earliest opportunity to make those all important attachments with their new family and to ensure that any delay is flushed out of the system wherever possible.

We will continue to develop the adoption scorecards and ensure that they are contextualised in a way that really reflects performance within local authorities. We have also introduced the First4Adoption phone and online service and the adoption passport, so that potential adopters have much better information and support. They do not have to go to the local authority to get that information and support, because it is provided in one place by many people who have personal experience of adoption and who are therefore in a good position to provide a better understanding of what prospective adopters are letting themselves in for and the great benefits that adoption can bring to them and, we hope, their family in the future.

Additionally, we have the new, fast, two-stage adopter approval process that started on 1 July. In most cases, prospective adopters can expect to wait no more than six months to be approved from when they register their interest. I was recently told of a couple who started the process in about October 2012, and twin babies were placed with them on an adoptive placement by February 2013. That is a fantastic example of how we can speed up the process but still ensure that we get a good match and a good-quality placement.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Surrey county council seemed to take the right approach to begin with. It was a twin-track approach of sorting out the parents and bringing in the children together. Then, of course, it flew apart. Is that what the Minister means by a twin-track approach?

[Mr Timpson]

What I am talking about relates to the adopter approval process. The twin-track approach is sometimes called concurrent planning. In the Bill, we are trying to promote fostering for adoption, so that rather than waiting until the final decision is made about whether the birth family is capable of caring for a child in the long term, moves can start to be made to establish the child in the placement most likely to be their permanent one. The aim is to avoid situations in which a child planned for adoption is still within the care system, moving from one foster placement to another.

The beauty of fostering for adoption, which some authorities, such as East Sussex, already carry out, is that the risk falls fairly and squarely on the prospective adopters. There is no risk to the child, who can be placed much earlier with their prospective adopters, so that the family can start to create the bonds that will stabilise their future hugely and avoid unnecessary delay, which we know only causes more problems rather than more solutions.

The two-stage process involves the initial two-month preparation period, during which the prospective adopters gather the information that they need to understand adoption in greater detail and the relevant checks and references are carried out. Those who successfully complete it then go on to the second stage—a more detailed and more appropriately focused four-month assessment. The beauty, as I said, is that it focuses on the essentials to ensure that prospective adopters can give what is necessary for a child to be placed with them successfully.

It is also worth noting that, since 1 July, a fast-track approval process has been introduced for those who have already adopted and fostered and are looking to adopt again. They do not need to start the whole process again, as they currently do; they can be fast-tracked, which will help reduce delay. The approach will dramatically reduce the amount of time that children must wait before they can move into their permanent home and their number of temporary placements. Stability is a key factor of a successful outcome for a child in care moving on to a permanent placement. The more we can reduce the number of placements, the more likely the child will have a successful childhood.

Adopters will be able to take a much more active role in identifying children through the measures in the Bill to allow approved prospective adopters to access the adoption register directly, which they have not been able to do before now. Again, we expect that that will drive up speed and the number of matches made, as well as increasing the pool of potential matches available directly to prospective adopters. We will pilot the new register in a number of local authorities before deciding whether it should be rolled out nationally, but we believe that that is the right approach, and it is supported by many excellent adoption charities.

We will change contact arrangements through the Bill, so that they are demonstrably more in the best interests of the child than anybody else’s. There have been dramatic reductions in delays since we introduced the new clause on the 26-week time limit for care proceedings. The time has gone from an average of 57 weeks to about 40 weeks, and it is falling fast. That will also help to solve many of the problems identified by my hon. Friend and experienced by his constituents.

As I have outlined, a great deal of work is under way to overhaul the adoption system fundamentally and tackle head-on many of the issues that my hon. Friend rightly raised, but we need to go further and faster, especially with regard to adopter recruitment. The backlog of 4,500 children in care waiting to be adopted needs to fall rapidly, and the system needs to sustain the ability to cope with increased future demand for prospective adopters. We know from the recent research carried out that hundreds of thousands of people out there would love the opportunity to adopt and consider it an aspect of their lives that they would like the opportunity to fulfil.

We need to grab that opportunity and make people feel welcome when they approach a local authority or voluntary adoption agency, so that they feel that the whole system is not set against them but there to support and encourage them and provide them with the advice and guidance that they need to feel equipped and confident when the great day comes and that child or those children end up in the bosom of their family. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that we have a system that is deserved by our most vulnerable children, as well as by the thousands of generous, loving people like my hon. Friend’s constituents who have gone to such great lengths to open up their homes and hearts. I join him in wishing his constituents and their two little girls the very best in future.

We must always be alive to the fact that the system that we have created is never perfect, but we do know that for too long the adoption system has failed to deliver for too many children. That is why it remains a high priority not just for me or the Secretary of State, who has his own personal experience of adoption, but for the Prime Minister, who from the start of this Government has championed adoption as one of the best ways to give children, some of them with the most difficult start in life, the best possible chance of the brightest future. It is therefore incumbent on us all to ensure that we achieve that, and I believe that the work that we are doing will go a long way to address many of the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituents have rightly raised and that he raised on their behalf. We will not take our foot off the gas.

17:07

Sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 10(13)).