WIREDGOV

An extra 10,000 schoolchildren adopted from care to benefit from additional pupil premium money. 

All schoolchildren adopted from care are to benefit from £20 million of additional pupil premium money to get the support they need to thrive at school - helping around an extra 10,000 pupils.

The extension of the funding, worth £1,900 per pupil, will help to close the attainment gap and transform pupil’s future life chances across England. Previously, only children adopted from care since 30 December 2005 were eligible.

Children adopted from care do not perform as well as their classmates at school. In 2013, less than half of adopted children reached the expected levels of reading, writing and maths at key stage 2, compared with 75% of non-adopted children.

The government is also announcing today that 29 councils and voluntary adoption agencies are being given the green light to allow people approved to adopt to search the national Adoption Register from this September. The pilot will allow approved adopters to learn more about the children who are waiting for a loving, stable home. They will be able to find out about their hobbies, likes and dislikes, and hear them speak and laugh in videos and pictures.

Opening up the register is designed to ensure that children are placed more quickly with families who can give them the stability and security they deserve. Strict safeguards will be put in place to ensure the safety and privacy of children and approved adopters.

Minister for Children and Families, Edward Timpson, who has 2 adopted brothers, said:

A child’s needs don’t change overnight just because they are adopted. It is vital that these vulnerable children are given the right support they need and the education they deserve to help them get on in life. Extending the pupil premium to all children adopted will mean they get support they need from day one at school, no matter what their starting point in life.

Opening up the Adoption Register, allowing parents approved to adopt to see videos and pictures, to hear the children speak and laugh - while keeping in place the strictest safeguards - will give them a greater role in the process and ensure more children are placed with their new family much more quickly.

Sir Martin Narey, government adviser on adoption, said:

Sometimes adopter-led matching leads to the adoption of children for whom hope of adoption has almost been abandoned. In their search for a child, adopters sometimes feel a chemistry that makes a child who might not otherwise have been considered for them seem right to them.

I warmly applaud the decision to open the register to adopters. More children desperately in need of an adoptive home will now find that home earlier.

Last year saw a record 15% increase in adoptions and these announcements, which build on this success, are part of a package of new measures that have come into force today - including:

• removing barriers to successful matches by ensuring ethnicity is not prioritised by councils and adoption agencies over other factors - such as the ability to provide a loving, stable home
• placing new rules on councils to actively consider fostering for adoption places where appropriate - allowing children to move in with their potential new adoptive family much earlier
• putting a new legal duty on all councils to tell adopters about the assistance and support available to them - including access to priority schools admissions for their children, the pupil premium plus, and 15 hours of free early years education for 2-year-olds

Isabelle Trowler, Chief Social Worker for Children and Families, said:

I welcome opening the register to approved adopters. We need to trust adopters more in deciding which children they can offer a stable and loving home. It will help more children find a permanent family more quickly.

Notes to Editors:

1. Based on self-declared adoption data from parents in 2013, less than half of these adopted children reached the expected levels of reading, writing and maths at key stage 2, compared with 75% of non-adopted children.

2. From April this year children adopted from care under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (implemented on 30 December 2005) attracted the pupil premium for the first time. The pupil premium has now been extended to cover all children adopted from care which means schools will get extra funding this financial year for pupils adopted before 30 December 2005. The change in eligibility for the pupil premium follows the government’s revised advice to school admission authorities which asks them to give all children adopted from care the highest priority and is part of the government’s wider reform programme to give them the support they need.

3. The pupil premium money will help schools provide tailored support to raise the attainment of all adopted children from this September, such as additional catch-up sessions or specialist training for staff working with children adopted from care.

4. The Adoption Register includes details of children waiting to be adopted and approved prospective adopters referred by adoption agencies, such as further information and pictures of the child. Videos will be available from October. The Adoption Register is currently used by social workers to find homes for children waiting to be adopted. The register is run under contract by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

5. 1,345 children and 747 adoptive families were on the Adoption Register as of 1 June 2014. Over 1,040 children in England have been matched by the register since April 2011.

6. Barbara Hutchinson, interim CEO, British Association for Fostering and Adoption, said:
   “Evidence from other adopter-led initiatives has shown that when given better information, approved adopters will often consider children whom they would otherwise not consider. This could be particularly beneficial for those children who are currently seen as ‘harder to place’, and yet so desperately need a loving home.The register has always been at the forefront of adopter-led initiatives and we believe that adopter access to the register will both increase the speed of matching, and enable more matches to be made.”

7. The local authorities taking part in the pilot are:

• Barnet
• Blackburn with Darwen
• Camden
• Cheshire East
• Ealing
• Enfield
• Essex
• Gloucestershire
• Hackney
• Haringey
• Islington
• North Tyneside
• Poole
• Shropshire
• Stockport
• Tameside
• Telford & Wrekin
• Trafford
• York

The voluntary adoption agencies taking part in the pilot are:

• Action for Children (Mosaic)
• Adoption Matters North West
• After Adoption
• Caritas Care
• Coram (London and East Midlands)
• DFW Adoption
• Faith in Families
• Families for Children
• Parents and Children Together
• Yorkshire Adoption Agency

The pilots will begin on the 1 September 2014 and will run for 9 months.