The role of modern adoption in meeting children’s need for a safe and stable home throughout their childhood and beyond
Our adoption conference earlier this year, ‘Can modern adoption meet the needs of today’s children and families?’, encouraged us to reflect on the role of adoption in meeting children’s need for a safe and stable home throughout their childhood and beyond.
Much has changed in adoption in recent years. Many of those changes have been rightly fought and campaigned for over many years. Our knowledge about what adopted people need to develop a strong, secure identity continues to grow through research and to influence our practice. This can be seen not only in the move to more open adoption, but also in the need to support and work with birth families to be able to engage in staying in touch plans, and the need for plans to remain individual and flexible.
We are acutely aware that adoption is not something that happens in childhood and then ends. Its impacts are lifelong, for not only the adopted person and but all those around them. It is crucial that we continue to learn from those with lived experience. There are ongoing challenges, not only practical, but systemic, and those brought about through resource constraints. The impacts of these for children, their families in the widest sense, young people and adults, as well as those working in the sector are wide, multi-faceted and significant.
More recently, the challenges facing adopted adults wishing to access their records has been highlighted, particularly in the context of post commencement regulations.
Indeed, the adoption regulations themselves are over 20 years old and neither they, nor the statutory guidance, reflect structural changes in adoption systems and the significant changes in our knowledge and practice over that period.
We await the response to the consultation about planned changes to the ASGSF. The consultation gave us an opportunity to consider what adoption support should really look like (read the full consultation response: here). We know that children who need adoption are some of the most vulnerable in our society, and we have a duty to ensure that they and their families can access effective and research-evidenced support in a timely way, when they need it. This may be at different points throughout their childhood years, but equally may be in early adulthood, or long into their maturity. Support needs to be available at the point children are at, not the point at which resources are available. The long-awaited response has a lot resting on it. Yet again we are getting to the point of delays in the application window having direct impacts on therapeutic relationships and services. Reliability and consistency of support of are crucial.
So, whilst there have been, and continue to be, many changes, there is much to continue to challenge and consider. We must make and take opportunities to learn from each other and those with lived experience. But we must also ensure that adoption remains a viable and achievable route to permanence for those children who need it. We owe it to them, and to those adopted before them, to ensure that they and their families’ needs are fully met.
Jane Poore, Adoption Consultant, CoramBAAF