Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress she has made on creating a national matching service for adoption services.

The department has provided £9 million of funding in the 2024/25 financial year for Adoption England to help develop national approaches for adoption services. This will help ensure consistency of high-quality adoption services across the country. This includes the implementation of new national standards for the adopter journey from initial enquiry to assessment and national matching standards to promote good practice across all agencies. These will help ensure that wherever an adopter or child is recruited or placed across the country they can expect consistent and high-quality services.

Adoption England has developed national adopter recruitment campaigns in each year since 2021 and is currently developing plans for 2025/2026. One of these campaigns can be found here: https://www.youcanadopt.co.uk/.

Adoption England published a three year strategy in 2024 that the government supports. This sets out a wide range of work to develop adoption services. The strategy can be found here: https://adoptionengland.co.uk/sites/default/files/2024-04/Adoption%20England%20Strategy.pdf.