Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been subject of concurrent planning for adoption in each of the last six years in each local authority; and what funding her Department has provided to (a) carers and (b) the British Association for Adoption and Fostering in each of the last five years.

Information on the number of prospective adopters receiving approval was first collected from all adoption agencies during the year ending 2013.

In 2013 and 2014 this data was collected by Ofsted and figures are published at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/childrens-social-care-statistics

Since 2014, the data has been collected as part of the Adoption Leadership Board (ALB) quarterly adoption survey and figures are published at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/adoption-system-performance

The number of children who received an adoption decision maker (ADM) decision that the child should be placed for adoption during each of the last five years is published in table E4 of the “Children Looked After in England (including adoption and care leavers)” Statistical First Release (SFR), published at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2014-to-2015

Figures for the last five years are provided in table 2 below:

Table 2 – Number of ADM decisions during the year ending 31 March

Source: SSDA903 data collection

Ofsted publishes local authority level information on the number of children in foster placements that are subject to concurrent planning. The information is available via the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fostering-in-england-1-april-2012-to-31-march-2013

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fostering-in-england-1-april-2013-to-31-march-2014

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fostering-in-england-1-april-2014-to-31-march-2015

During 2014-15, we provided a grant of £199,520 for the British Association of Adoption and Fostering in order to provide training to social workers. This grant included training for social workers on fostering for adoption.

We do not collect information centrally on which local authorities have contracted out their adoption functions to a third party.