https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/oct/31/adoptionandfostering.childrensservicesAdoption targets 'should be scrapped'
David Batty
Published on Mon 31 Oct 2005 16.01 GMT
The head of Britain's largest adoption charity today called on ministers to scrap controversial targets aimed at ensuring more children in care are adopted. The chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (Baaf), Felicity Collier, said the targets had been misrepresented in the tabloid press as bribes for local authorities to remove children from their birth parents for spurious reasons. There was a danger this could undermine public confidence in adoption, she added. As the targets had now largely met their real aim preventing children approved for adoption from being kept in care homes for months or being placed with a series of foster carers before being permanently placed with a family Ms Collier said they could be dropped. Five years ago the government set a target for a 40% increase in adoptions of children in care by March this year, rising to 50% by next March. It also set a target for 95% of children in care approved for adoption to actually be adopted within 12 months. The targets were intended to prevent children in care from waiting months or even years before finding an adoptive family. The number of children adopted from residential or foster care has risen by 1,000 since the year 2000, from 2,700 in 2000 to 3,700 last year. There has been an increase in the number of children adopted within 12 months from 2,500 in 2001 to 3,000 last year, although the number waiting for more than a year has also risen over the same period from 600 to 790. But Ms Collier said it was likely that the proportion of looked after children adopted had probably reached a peak. She said: "Targets have turned around local authority performance to ensure they provide resources for permanent places. They have concentrated the minds of social workers on the value of adoption and the need for stability and permanence. It would be helpful at the end of this year to phase out the targets. I'd be surprised if many more children in care could be adopted. It's served its purpose because we now have stability targets to ensure children in the care system aren't passed around from place to place."
The stability targets state that by 2008 80% of children who have been looked after for at least two and a half years should have been living in the same placement for at least two years, or placed for adoption.
