Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department hold on the number of cases of adoption (a) disruption and (b) breakdown for each of the last five years; and if she will publish that data.

The department does not collect information centrally on the number of adoptions that have been disrupted or adoptions that breakdown. We only publish information on whether children starting to be looked after in any given year were known to have been previously adopted. This information is in table C1 of the ‘Children looked after in England’ statistical release, which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/92f77d0d-7e95-45a1-f1db-08dd5cc661f7.

The department is providing funding of £3 million in this financial year to Adoption England to improve adoption support services in Regional Adoption Agencies. This includes developing more multi-disciplinary teams across the country to provide specialist and therapeutic support to families, and the development of national standards for adoption support. It also includes a new framework for an early support core offer, ‘Becoming a Family’, for the first twelve to eighteen months of placement, and an Adoption Support Plan to guide assessments of a family’s support needs. All are designed to improve support and reduce the risk of an adoption breakdown.

Adoption England are also planning work to develop a national protocol on how children’s services, front door services and adoption support teams work together to better support families at risk of adoption disruption.

Adoption England and Regional Adoption Agencies work closely with adopters on all of their projects to improve adoption support services. This includes considering the latest evidence of why adoption disruptions have occurred in their agencies and across the country.