Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how funding for adoption services will be distributed to local authorities once joint arrangements have been made for carrying out local authority adoption functions.

Funding for children’s services – including funding to support adoption functions – is paid through the Early Intervention Grant (EIG), which is discernible within the Business Rates Retention Scheme. With this funding, local authorities are expected to respond to their core duties. The EIG is non ring fenced, in order to give local commissioners the freedom and flexibility to respond to locally determined demand. Local authorities have a duty to provide adoption services, so are therefore expected to pay for adoption services through their EIG, including when delivering their adoption functions through a regional adoption agency.

The government will work with local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies to deliver regional adoption agencies. This year, we are providing up to £4.5million of start-up funding to support early adopters to accelerate the development of the new arrangements. In addition, we are also providing £30m which can be used by local authorities over the next twelve months to cover the fees incurred when children are placed with an adopter recruited by another local authority or voluntary adoption agency. This will remove a financial barrier and make it easier for children waiting for adoption to be matched with approved adopters, wherever in the country they may be.

We would expect regional adoption agencies to lead to financial savings to local authorities over time. Savings could be made through: economies of scale; reducing the length of time children spend in care waiting for adoption; and reducing the number of children who are not adopted because parents could not be found for them.