Adoptive Parents: Financial Support

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.