‘The Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation has today published the report ‘Adoption: Post-legislative Scrutiny’. Of interest to our partners the Committee has recommended:
- improving the training and supervision of social workers to understand the importance of robust and early decision-making about children’s future care. This is something we at research in practice are passionate about and we support our partners training needs through our learning programme, publications and products. Our recent Analysis and Critical Thinking in Assessment resource pack supports social workers in achieving good assessments, essential for good and timely decision making.
- the focus on adoption should not be delivered at the expense of other permanency options. research in practice is involved in exploring the evidence on how best to provide stable and permanent homes for children in England who cannot live with their parents through the Care Inquiry. Evidence collected from the sector will form the basis of the Inquiry’s recommendations to government about how to succeed in helping achieve long-term stability for those children.
- local authorities should be placed under legal obligation to provide post-adoption support to children and adopters
- monitoring adoption outcomes and collect data and learn from adoption breakdowns
- efforts to keep families together and use of preventative programmes should continue
- encouraging more local authorities to move towards joint adoption services with neighbouring authorities and adoption agencies.
The full report can be downloaded here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldadopt/127/127.pdf’
