Member News: TACT's Andy Elvin in Children and Young People Now - "Back to the Future"

The Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA) is claiming that adoption will save lots of money and we should be pushing more children through for adoption in order to achieve these savings.

Reading this report took me back to the depressing and false “adoption is best” gold standard arguments, unthinkingly advanced by Blair and Cameron.  

All relative special guardianship orders (SGO) used to be adoptions, so you should look at both options together, by doing this you find that numbers are rising and have been consistently.  

In 2018, 7,320 children were subject to either SGOs or adoption orders, in 2020 it was 7200, a change that is barely statistically relevant.  Having more children remain within extended family, rather than be adopted by an unrelated stranger, is not a cause for concern.  

Despite the CVAA report claiming there is no evidence about the efficacy of SGOs, there is, Professor Jim Wade at the University of York, has done some excellent research, which has been shared with Family Court Judges at the Judicial College and helped the Judiciary understand initial outcomes for children placed under SGOs  

This research found that: “The risk of SGO breakdown appears low, even amongst higher risk groups. The younger the child at placement, and the stronger the bond between the child and carer prior to the SGO being made, the less likely a breakdown will occur. However, there are limitations in the support and services available to special guardianship families. Support varies by local authority, but it is important for agencies to work together to provide an appropriate range of services.”  

This leads to another issue with the CVAA report. They seem to be under the impression that the judiciary are not making ‘enough’ adoption orders because they lack information. The exact opposite is the case.  

The judiciary now know far more about long term outcomes and have heard more from adopted adults and adoptive families who have significantly struggled. The UK courts have also had more exposure to European family courts over the past 15 years, and the UK is unique in Europe in having significant numbers of non-consensual stranger adoptions. This undoubtedly had an impact on the senior judiciary in England and Wales and led to more interrogation of care plans presented to them, which recommended adoption.  This was reflected in a 2015 Judgment by the President of the Family Division Sir James Munby who said: 

"England is unusual in Europe in even permitting adoption without parental consent, indeed in the teeth of parental opposition—what I shall refer to as 'non-consensual adoption'—and even more unusual in the degree to which it has recourse to non-consensual adoption" 

He went on to describe non-consensual adoption as "the last resort", only to be allowed "where nothing else will do". It is widely thought that it was this judgement that slowed and reversed the rise in adoption numbers.    

Another theme of the report is the superior long-term outcomes they claim for those children adopted. This is not a serious comparison, as the cohorts of children are so wholly different. The largest group of children who come into foster or residential care are aged between 10 and 15. These are children for whom adoption is neither appropriate or available in any meaningful sense. In 2022, 16,320 of the 31,010 children who came into care were aged 10 or over, that is 53 per cent.  Many of these children will have experienced significant trauma and disadvantage prior to entering care. Comparing longer term outcomes for these children, with children who were adopted aged under three, as the overwhelming majority of adoptees are, is simply meaningless.       

Even when you engage with this report in its central theme, that adoption is cheaper to the state than the care system, it falls down. Page 12 of the report states:  “Adoption yields at least £1.3m in net benefits to a child or young person, their families and other key stakeholders in society.” 

But £1.1 million of this is the projected saving of the child not being in foster or residential care, so would be true of kinship care or child remaining with birth parents.  

In fact, keeping children with birth parents is arguably cheaper (should cost be your primary concern), as it obviates the need for costly care proceedings and adopter recruitment costs. It is also totally unknowable as the trajectory of the child subject to child protection procedures may take many forms.    

SGOs with kinship carers is also potentially cheaper, but this touches on some uncomfortable truths. Adopters tend to be from a higher income demographic, children subject to care proceedings tend to be from families of lower incomes, and thus kinship families tend to be from the same demographic as they are relatives of the child.   

This speaks directly to the work of Professor Bywaters which found that  “changes in income alone, holding all other factors constant, have a major impact on the numbers of children being harmed. Reductions in income and other economic shocks increase the numbers being subject to neglect and abuse, while improvements in income reduce those figures”  

There is a clear argument that supporting vulnerable families better, including financially, is actually what would save the exchequer money, if that is now to be a criteria we use to assess the best interests of children.  

Andy Elvin is chief executive of Tact Care

Source:
www.cypnow.co.uk

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