Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what initial assessment his Department has made of the impact of the national #YouCanAdopt campaign on the number of (a) adoption enquiries and (b) adoption approvals.
Our national adoption strategy, published last year, sets out our bold vision to deliver excellent adoption services across England. It sets our commitment to:
To support delivery of the strategy, we have provided additional funding of £48.1 million in the 2021-22 financial year.
We continue to discuss adoption numbers with the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board and with the RAA Leaders’ group. These discussions have suggested that reasons for the decrease include the impact of COVID-19 restrictions in 2020-21, including on the courts and on wider decision-making processes within local authorities and RAAs.
Since the national #YouCanAdopt campaign began, we have seen a continued increase in the number of approvals of adopters. We now have more adopters (2,140) than children waiting (2,020).
Over 1,000 enquiries were received by the 6 adoption agencies sampled for evaluation purposes. Scaled up, the National Adopter Recruitment Steering Group estimated 10,000+ enquiries across all agencies in England during the campaign period.