Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many adoptions have been disrupted in each of the last 10 years.

The department does not hold information on all adoptions which breakdown after the adoption order is granted.

A research report ‘Beyond the adoption order’ was published in 2014 and gave a one-off insight into adoption breakdown. It can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/beyond-the-adoption-order-challenges-intervention-disruption.

Information is collected on children who return to care and who are reported as having previously been adopted. This is published in table C1 in the statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2016 to 2017’, available to view at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2016-to-2017.

These figures were collected for the first time in 2014 and should be treated with caution as the information is based on self-declaration and for a large number of children the previous permanence arrangement is not known.