Adoptive Parents: Financial Support

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That the House has considered the matter of financial support for adoptive parents.

It is a pleasure to lead this debate and to have you in the Chair, Ms Furniss. Adoption is one of the most selfless acts that a person or family can undertake. It provides children with the opportunity to thrive in a permanent loving home, often completing a family, as I have seen myself in my role as a proud auntie. Despite the immeasurable value that adoption offers to those children, their families and society, financial barriers prevent many prospective adopters from stepping forward. Today, I wish to highlight the case of Kirsty, a constituent of mine from Marple. Her case exposes a significant gap in the financial support system that discourages self-employed individuals from adopting.

Kirsty is a self-employed mother who dreamed of expanding her family. After a year of trying to conceive a second child, she and her husband decided to explore adoption. Their first son, Charlie, a bright-eyed four-year-old with an unshakeable love for trains, often talked about how much he wanted a little sibling to be his assistant train driver. For Kirsty and her family, opening their hearts and home to a child via adoption was the best option.

Just as Kirsty began to embrace that vision for her family’s future, a close friend, also self-employed and in the process of adopting, informed her that she was not entitled to the same financial support as others through statutory adoption pay. Ever since, her plans have been thrown into doubt. Unlike biological parents, who qualify for maternity allowance, or employed adopters, who are eligible for statutory adoption pay, self-employed adopters like Kirsty fall into a financial support void.

Although statutory guidance allows local authorities to make discretionary means-tested payments equivalent to those allowances, such support is not guaranteed and local authorities have no legal duty to provide it. A freedom of information request by the charity Home for Good revealed that 34% of local authorities lack any policy for providing that financial support. Even worse, 90% of self-employed adopters surveyed in 2022 by the all-party parliamentary group on adoption and permanence reported that their social worker never advised them about the possibility of receiving the discretionary payments.

Many of those in Kirsty’s situation cannot take the financial risk of adopting a child without assured support, and she is not alone. The gap creates a stark disparity between those who are employed and the self-employed—a barrier for many who might otherwise give a child a stable and loving home. The consequences of that lack of support are far-reaching. Having often faced abuse or neglect, adopted children need time and care to settle into their new families; as a result, adoptive parents are often advised to take up to a year off work to ensure proper bonding and support. Where does this leave those who are self-employed? Without financial support, they face impossible choices: continuing to work and sacrificing the vital time they need to build a relationship with their child; sacrificing their careers and their financial stability; or abandoning their adoption plans altogether. For many, the only realistic option is the latter.

Governments of different shades have often recognised the importance of building a relationship with an adopted child, but for too long they have insisted that self-employed adopters should have to rely on unreliable discretionary payments. In November, I asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to extend statutory adoption pay to the self-employed, or to introduce an equivalent benefit. Although the Minister’s response expressed support for adoptive parents, it pointed yet again to a flawed system of discretionary payments.

In December, I called on the Government to allocate time to debate how we can support people like Kirsty, and to do that in Government time—sadly, so far, to no avail. Just before Christmas, I tabled an amendment to the Employment Rights Bill—new clause 46—which would allow the self-employed to claim statutory adoption pay. In a letter to me last week a Minister—not the Minister present—committed again to reviewing the parental leave system, agreeing that improvements need to be made. As the review begins, I urge Departments across Government to prioritise financial support for self-employed adopters.

The financial case for supporting adoptive parents is compelling. Research by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies UK shows that in 2021 adoption saved the UK economy £4.2 billion through improvements in children’s health, and in their education and employment prospects, compared with the outcomes for children who remained in care or other placements. Local councils saved £3.6 billion, while the NHS and wider economy benefited by £34 million and £541 million respectively.

The CVAA has also found that at least £1.3 million-worth of value is created when a child is adopted, underscoring the societal and economic benefits of increasing adoption numbers. Yet the number of adoptions has halved since a peak in 2015, even as the number of looked-after children has risen by 25%. Removing financial barriers and guaranteeing financial support, and empowering those who are self-employed to step forward for adoption, could reverse this troubling trend.

The case for further financial support for adoptive parents to address the distinct challenges they face is equally compelling. Rates of depression and anxiety are as high as 32% among those who adopt. Unlike biological parents, adoptive parents often have to contend with navigating their child’s complex trauma or attachment issues, and with a long and arduous adoption process. These challenges can be compounded by the grief and loss that many adoptive parents can feel if they have experienced infertility or failed attempts to conceive.

Adoption can also place strain on relationships. While divorce rates among adoptive parents are not disproportionate, the difficulties of parenting children with complex needs, alongside the emotional toll of the adoption process, can push couples to their limits. Financial instability worsens those challenges, threatening the family cohesion of those who are brave and selfless enough to adopt.

Finally, the adoption process in the UK is long and complex, sometimes taking years from the initial application to the final court approval. Prospective parents are subject to background checks, references, intense assessment, and adoption panel scrutiny before they can even find a match. Although this journey is, of course, necessary to ensure the best outcomes for children, it places immense stress on prospective adopters. I urge the Minister and the various Departments involved to explore ways to provide financial support that acknowledges and mitigates the unique pressures on adoptive parents, self-employed or otherwise. I hope that will play a significant part in the upcoming review of parental leave.

Adoptive parents deserve robust financial support. Addressing this issue is not only a matter of fairness but a means of unlocking the full potential of adoption. Ministers across Government, and the various Departments involved, have the opportunity to lead the way by extending statutory adoption pay to self-employed adopters, or by implementing an equivalent benefit. We should not allow financial barriers to stand in the way of creating loving families and providing children with the stability they so desperately need and undoubtedly deserve. The Government could and should act decisively to ensure that adoption remains a viable and supported choice for all prospective parents.

16:39

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for bringing a very important topic to the House’s attention. It is important that we engage with adoptive parents, and prospective adoptive parents, to hear their experiences of adopting a child, because only through listening can we know the real-life challenges they face. The hon. Member gave a prime example in her opening comments regarding the financial pressures that deter couples and individuals from coming forward to adopt children.

As a Minister in Northern Ireland, I put through the Adoption and Children Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. Until that point, Northern Ireland had been bound by wholly inadequate and outdated legislation that had not been updated for three decades—it actually predated devolution. The 2022 Act updated the broad adoption frameworks and also had some tangible benefits, such as the introduction of a legal duty so that adopters in Northern Ireland can now access more support through our social services.

The issue raised in this debate is one step—and only one step—that the UK Government could take to bring forward immediate action to improve support for some of our adoptive parents: broadening statutory adoption leave and pay to self-employed parents in the same way that the maternity allowance is available for self-employed parents. This is important because the latest statistics show that, as at 31 March 2024, we had 3,999 children and young people in care in Northern Ireland. That is the highest number recorded since the introduction of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Of those children in care, 28% had been looked after for less than a year but 29% had been looked after for more than five years.

I believe in anything we can do to increase the number of people who want to adopt children, take them out of our care systems and give them the loving, caring home that is often experienced by those who come out of care into adoption. Last year, only 97 children were adopted from care in Northern Ireland, and 48% of them were adopted by couples in their 40s. Taking this step could encourage a wider spectrum of people to come forward. I am not saying this in a derogatory way, but those couples in their 40s may be more financially secure at that point in their life, and see that as the point at which they can adopt. Government support would allow younger couples, including those who are self-employed, and even those who work from home, to come forward and take up the gift that is the ability to adopt a child out of care. That is why I encourage the Government to do all they can to support the issue that has been brought to the House in this debate.

16:43

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) on securing this really important debate.

I highlight to the Minister the adoption support fund; I would be grateful if he could talk about any long-term plans the Government may have to bake that into Government proposals, because currently it is a hand-to-mouth existence. A week after I got elected, a resident raised with me their concerns. I wrote to the Minister on this issue some months ago, but I wonder whether the Government’s thoughts on the matter have changed.

I speak as somebody who was myself adopted into a very loving family in the 1970s, with Eric and Penny. Eric was self-employed. He was not a toolmaker; he was a lorry driver—a haulage contractor if we were trying to be social climbers. The reality is that it was a really loving family. Of course, as a self-employed haulage contractor, Eric would have benefited from the proposals we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove.

The world of adoption and fostering has changed massively. The babe in arms is often not what one gets through adoption or fostering, but children who have had complex, challenging lives and will try to test parents. I have a good friend in Torquay whose child tests him regularly. The child believes that daddy is a monster because his previous daddy was, sadly, a monster to him. It is really challenging for that adoptive family to face that.

I also welcome the comments about Home for Good, which is a service that I brought in to Torbay when I was leader of the local authority. It looks at driving adoption through those with faith and using churches to support those with faith. There is a significant need out there.

Even for purely cynical reasons, I encourage the Minister to reflect on how important it is to support self-employed people so that we enhance the pool, as one only needs to look at the cost of social care to councils up and down the country when a foster placement or adoption—as quite often fostering does turn into adoption—cannot be found. The private sector is sadly making significant profits from that.

Although I am pleased that the Government are making progress in those areas, the best way to make progress is to look at places such as Leeds, which I visited once upon a time, and now also Torbay, becoming UNICEF child friendly communities. That will drive a positive culture of engagement and support for our young people throughout the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will look kindly on the proposals from my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove.

16:47

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

This is a very important topic, as hon. Members have acknowledged. I was particularly struck by the specific impact of the financial regime that adopting parents face, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) described in the case of her constituent Kirsty. I was also struck by her general points, which were echoed by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), about the challenges faced by adoptive parents, including the challenges that their children continue to endure having joined their family, as well as those of the adoptive family and their birth children.

As hon. Members spoke, I was reflecting on how much more we now know about the early development of children. I compare the experience of 50 years ago, when my parents adopted my sister, with the experience that my sister has had adopting her two young sons, and the difference is pretty stark. My sister simply arrived and that was that; the expectation was that all was now well and no further support was required. Indeed, I am glad to say that things did turn out very well for my sister. The support that has been offered to her as an adoptive parent, however, is far greater and more sympathetic, and shows much greater understanding of the challenges around child development than that of a generation or two ago.

I will briefly pay tribute to the former Government who, over the last 10 or 15 years, introduced some quite significant improvements to the system that adoptive parents face. David Cameron and Michael Gove both made it a priority to ensure that the regime around adoption was improved. I have just read a leader in The Spectator praising the last Government’s performance on adoption—I cannot think that that was anything to do with the editor of that magazine—but Michael Gove does deserve credit for the work that was done, such as the introduction of adoption leave; the pupil premium and the additional pupil premium that are available for adopted children; and the priority in school admissions.

I pay tribute to my former colleague, David Johnston, the Children’s Minister in the last Parliament, who introduced the adoption support fund that the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned. It is fair to ask why additional support is needed for adoptive families and adopted children. One could argue—and I think we should—that all families need support and help bringing up children.

As we have heard from hon. Members, however, a young child almost always reaches the destination of adoption after a long journey of disruption. It is wonderful that a settled life is now available to that child, but the challenge is not over when they arrive in their new family. We all know from experiences in our constituencies how much adoptive families have to work to ensure that their children are properly supported.

It is worth noting something that I am afraid still somewhat applies, despite the reforms I mentioned: while there is an expectation that fostering families will need ongoing support after the placement of the child, in the case of adoption, the expectation remains—as with a new child born into a family—that the child is almost exclusively the responsibility of the adoptive parents and support from the outside is not necessary. However, it is necessary.

I am grateful to be able to add my voice to what we have heard about the enormous benefits that adoptive parents bring to our society as a whole by, frankly, rescuing many children who faced years of potential neglect or abuse if they remained where they were, or simply faced inadequate care and upbringing if they remained in the care system. I think of former colleagues of mine who, 25 years ago, adopted quadruplet boys aged two who had been removed from a disgraceful, appallingly abusive family. Although it was very challenging for the family and the four boys over their childhood, they have all grown up well and are doing well. Their parents are rightly proud of them. I think of the likely trajectory that those children would have been on if that family had not stepped forward to look after them—four boys who experienced extreme abuse in their early years—and the cost that would have been imposed on our society, both financial and social.

A topic that is very much on our minds at the moment is the tragedy of grooming gangs. While it is complex and every case is different, what many of the cases had in common was the fact that the girls who were victims of those crimes had been in care. The clear obligation on us as a society—as the last Government and this one have both asserted—is to have more children leaving the care system and gaining the stability and support of a loving family. That means more fostering—we all need to do more to promote fostering opportunities and help people to become foster parents—and more adopting, as we have been discussing, as well as other ways we can support children to grow up in stable families. I support initiatives such as fostering for adoption, as well as Home for Good, which is a tremendous project.

I acknowledge the work of kinship carers, who are an important part of the economy of care. Thanks largely to David Johnston in the last Parliament, they can get significantly more support, but we need to go further to ensure that they too can access support around statutory pay and parental leave.

As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove said, there is clearly an anomaly for adoptive parents, and particularly for self-employed parents, who cannot get statutory adoption pay. Unlike self-employed birth parents, they do not get the equivalent of maternity pay. As she said, there are opportunities for local authorities to provide discretionary support, but most people are unaware of that, and it is, indeed, discretionary. I am not sure that it should not be discretionary—there is an important debate to be had about the degree to which we ringfence finance and impose obligations on local authorities—but there clearly needs to be far greater awareness among the public of the support available, and greater encouragement for local authorities to fulfil their responsibilities to adoptive parents.

We need a better funding arrangement for local government so that it can take on board and fulfil its social responsibilities. Most of all, we must recognise that families are the essential welfare system in our society. The more we can do to ensure that they can fulfil that responsibility and do that important work for children who desperately need the love of a supportive family, the better. I acknowledge that the Government want to do that, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister will do in the future.

16:56

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) on securing this important debate. I thank all who have taken part in the discussion for their thoughtful and incisive comments.

As the hon. Lady said, I recently received a written question from her about this issue, and I commend her for her continued support and campaigning in this crucial area. Becoming an adoptive parent is, of course, rewarding, but it is without doubt challenging too. It is admirable when anybody steps up to that role, let alone those who do so while in work. The Government do not underestimate the life-changing difference that adoptive parents up and down the country make every single day.

Breaking down barriers to opportunity is one of this Government’s key missions for the country. That is why we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure employed parents can balance their work and home lives. Our plan to make work pay will ensure there is more flexibility and support for working families, and our reforms to get Britain working include transforming employment support so that people with specific barriers to work, such as parents, receive personalised help to overcome the particular hurdles they face. That not only supports our No. 1 mission—to drive growth in every corner of the country—but creates a cycle of opportunity. People cannot fulfil their potential if they are struggling to afford life’s essentials, but good work brings security and dignity. That is why good work will always be the foundation of our approach to tackling poverty and supporting families.

Children cannot fulfil their potential if they grow up in poverty in any familial setting, and we cannot fulfil our potential as a country if the next generation is held back. That is why we have already started the urgent work needed to get the child poverty taskforce up and running. It is working to publish a comprehensive and ambitious child poverty strategy that will consider all children across the United Kingdom, whether in care, adopted or living with birth parents.

It is worth reiterating that maternity payments such as statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance are intended to protect the health and wellbeing of women and their babies, rather than to assist with the costs associated with a new child. I appreciate that the hon. Lady is specifically raising the issue of adoptive parents. When a family welcomes a new child into their world, it is only right that they have the time to bond—a point that the hon. Lady made eloquently in introducing the debate, and that all hon. Members reiterated.

It was genuinely important to hear about Kirsty’s experience of thinking about adopting a second child—an “assistant train driver”. She is one of the many people who are having to make very difficult choices. I have constituents in a similar position, and it is incredibly important that we hear such testimony when considering these issues.

The hon. Lady also highlighted that there is no guarantee on the means-tested local authority payments, as was reiterated by the shadow Minister, and that many councils do not have policies for that, before going on to set out that adoption saves the economy £4.2 billion a year. She, like myself, is a former senior local authority leader in Manchester. Having been deputy leader of Stockport council, she knows not only of the benefits of adoption for education and health, but of the many pressures within the local authority care system and the fact that secure, permanent placements are the best thing for the child. That support is priceless, and I think we are all agreed on that today.

The hon. Lady went on to say that new adoptive parents need to take time off to enable a child to settle in their new home. I absolutely agree. There are many complex needs that adoptive parents may face in settling their new child in, and balancing that with their employment needs, whether they are self-employed or in mainstream employment, poses many issues. I agree that improvements need to be made to the parental system. If she will bear with me, I will make a specific promise to her on how we can best move this forward.

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) also highlighted his local government experience. It is important to draw that out because we have all been corporate parents. We understand the importance of the role played both by the care system and by foster carers, kinship carers, and especially adoptive parents making a decision to permanently offer a home, love and support to a young person. He set out some of the specific challenges faced in Northern Ireland, for which I am grateful. He is right to highlight the spiralling statistics for children in care. As I just mentioned, it is critical to anybody with local government experience that sustainability and feasibility of adoption for all is imperative. I am very much aware of the points coming out in this debate, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, asked a specific question on the adoption support fund. He is, as ever, entirely right to raise this very reasonable question because current funding is, I think, only set until April 2025. If I may, I will write to the Department for Education directly and share the response I receive. I do not want to speak on behalf of another Department today, in case the information I provide turns out to be inaccurate, but I will follow up with the hon. Gentleman directly on that.

The hon. Gentleman also rightly set out the challenge of addressing the stereotypical perception of adoption as receiving a babe in arms. More often than not, people could be opening up their home and family to older children, those with very complex needs, or those who have experienced significant trauma. That requires time off too. Time off is required not just for a newborn child who needs a parent with them for obvious reasons throughout the day, but potentially for an older child’s significant, complex needs. The hon. Gentleman’s point reflects the real-world circumstances that many adoptive parents face.

The shadow Minister set out many of the advances that have been made over the past 14 years in this space, and I fully acknowledge those; but that prompts the question how, despite those advances, we have ended up in this position. I accept that we moved forward by introducing, as he said, automatic pupil premium allocation, the adoption support fund, adoption leave and so on. The challenge we face is how we can collectively encourage people to come forward as adopters, kinship carers and foster carers. As a Government, we have a responsibility to make that process as easy as possible. When we look at the outcomes of children who grow up in what one might consider traditional care settings—that is, a children’s home—versus the outcomes of children who grow up in a more traditional family unit, whether adoptive or foster care, or with birth parents, the statistics are stark. If we look at the number of care leavers in the prison system, for instance, or the level of qualifications, some of the figures are incredibly concerning. The shadow Minister’s point was very well made.

Turning back to my substantive comments, we want to ensure that parental leave is supporting all working families as well as possible, so the Government have committed to a review of the parental leave system and work is already under way on planning for that review.

Enabling parents to take time off work not only allows for bonding time but ensures that they are able to give a child the care that they need. In the case of adoption, that ability to connect and care, as we have just discussed, is essential in terms of securing the permanence of any adoption placement. For all those reasons, employed adoptive parents have broadly the same rights and protections as birth parents, in that statutory adoption leave is a day one right, but of course there is the anomaly that we are speaking about today.

I therefore want to give the hon. Member for Hazel Grove a clear assurance that I will write in to that parental leave review and make sure that what we have discussed today is fed into that process, because whatever our views on the rights and wrongs of this, I think that we can all accept that there is a gap, and that we all want as many people as possible to be able to come forward as carers. The anomaly is potentially a barrier to that for some people, not least because we have that means-tested, not especially well advertised, not-brilliant-levels-of-uptake current system, which I think we would all want looked at.

In the meantime, where adopters do not qualify for that statutory payment they have the local authority option, but I would like to highlight some of the wider support, as the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire, did in his contribution. There is not only advice, information and counselling, but means-tested support. Potentially, on top of that, there is support for new parents—any new parents—in terms of potential eligibility for universal credit, child benefit, and the Sure Start maternity grant, all of which can help all families with the cost of raising children, especially those in need of extra support.

I think I will leave it there, Ms Furness, with just a final thank you to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove for calling this debate. We recognise the contributions of self-employed people, who are a key part of our economy, and we appreciate the valuable difference that adopters make. Therefore, it is only right that we have taken the time today —I am pleased to have had the chance—to consider how we support the remarkable people who take on both roles at the same time.

I reiterate that I will write to the Department for Business and Trade about the issues that have been raised in this debate, and about how the debate can feed into the review that I mentioned earlier, because it is crucial that we accept that there is an anomaly in the system. I will, obviously, send the hon. the hon. Member for Hazel Grove a copy of my correspondence.

17:07

[Lisa Smart]

I am really grateful to all Members who have taken part in this debate. The hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) spoke about his experience as a Minister in Northern Ireland, and it is really good to have his support. He is absolutely right to point out the numbers of children that we are talking about in the different parts of the UK, and how we can enable more brilliant future parents to adopt, and drive up those adoption rates.

I want to thank Penny and Eric, the mum and dad of my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who adopted him in the 1970s. My hon. Friend was absolutely right to talk about the adoption support fund, which I know is hugely valuable to many families—to ask about its future security, to ask for future clarity on what is coming down the track, and to talk about the different challenges faced by adopters and point out that adoption is not about a stereotypical “babe in arms” found under a bush somewhere.

A number of Members—including both the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), and my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay—spoke about the role that local councils, and the funding of local councils, play in some of the decision making that can happen in this area. The Minister rightly mentioned my previous life as a member of a local authority. One of the jobs that a councillor takes most seriously is that corporate parenting role—that key role of keeping the most vulnerable children safe. On local authority finances, lots of people in this place talk about the importance of clarity and proper funding—indeed, the Opposition spokesperson talked about funding local authorities and doing that properly—and I think that, when we are talking about some of the most important jobs of councils, we are indeed talking about children in care, who are the most vulnerable in our society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) talked about the cost to councils, and the cost of children’s waiting a very long time for their adoption to come through. The longer they wait, the more it costs both them as individuals and councils in terms of ongoing care. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), talked about how our understanding of early childhood development has developed. He also talked about somebody who used to work in this place who knows quite a lot about adoption issues, and he was right to do so because we can work cross-party to fix such anomalies. I am grateful for his remarks.

The hon. Gentleman talked about a family of four boys, and that is exactly the sort of story we need to have in our minds. It was about the impact of a good, loving, warm and secure home for the boys, and how their lives might well have been different had they not had that. I am grateful to him for that, as well as for talking about kinship carers, which are being looked at in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. My party looks forward to scrutinising and improving some of the Bill in that regard. I welcome the Minister’s comments, that he accepts that we are today talking about an anomaly, and especially his comments on the action he has undertaken to take. It is good that the Government are committed to reviewing parental leave, and I hope that is the mechanism through which we can correct the anomaly.

We absolutely need to encourage more people into fostering, adoption and kinship care, and we need to remove any barriers that may stop people from being able to take up those opportunities. I am really grateful to everyone who has taken part today. It is really good to have Government support for looking at this subject, and I really look forward to where this goes, because we need to enable as many brilliant future parents as we possibly can to take up this opportunity and complete their family.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of financial support for adoptive parents.

17:12

Sitting adjourned.