Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Vickers Excerpts
Monday 24th March 2014

(10 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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The Secretary of State was asked—
Martin Vickers Portrait Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
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2. What progress he has made on speeding up the adoption process.

Edward Timpson Portrait The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
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Major reforms in the Children and Families Act 2014 will help to speed up the legal adoption process for children, support quicker matching and ensure the earlier placement of children with foster families who may go on to adopt them. We have also implemented a new adopter approval process and, in 2012-13, the number of adopters was 34% up on the year before.

Martin Vickers Portrait Martin Vickers
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I thank the Minister for his reply and welcome improvements that have been made to the system, but may I draw his attention to a Canadian couple who have been trying to adopt a child from north-east Lincolnshire to whom one of them is related? The process started in December 2012 but has still not been completed, and the child is now three. If the complications have arisen because the couple are from abroad, can anything be done to speed up the process?

Edward Timpson Portrait Mr Timpson
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My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that some adoption cases take far too long. The average time from care to placement is 22 months, which is why we have streamlined the approvals process and introduced regular scorecard data to show local authorities’ timeliness with adoptions. It is also why we have put more than £200 million into the adoption system to try to rip out unnecessary red tape and ensure that everyone keeps their efforts firmly fixed on children who badly need stable homes.