More than 96,000 people have contacted First4adoption

First4Adoption is an information service which puts prospective adopters in touch with adoption agencies in their areas of interest. It is a partnership managed by the charities Coram Children’s Legal Centre, Adoption UK and Coram and is supported and funded by the Department for Education.

Dr Carol Homden, CBE of First4Adoption is celebrating the fact that since its launch a year ago the organisation has received 96,000 enquiries from people interested in adoption. However, she still urges that with local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies they must redouble their efforts. According to the Government website, these figures build on the successes of 2013, which saw a 34% increase in adopters and a record 15% rise in adoptions.

Sit Martin Narey has recently been appointed as the Chair of the Adoption Leadership Board - a new national initiative jointly developed by government, councils and voluntary adoption agencies to help them stay on track and drive the agenda forward. The board has a key role to play in providing independent advice to ministers we are informed which seems a strange claim to make given the board`s membership and how it was set up.

Sir Martin Narey, who for many years worked in the prison service,  moved to the charity sector to lead Barnardo`s through a period of growth making it once again the UK`s biggest children`s charity with a £250m turnover. He has said: "I am delighted to see that many of the recommendations I made to ministers in 2012 about adoption and siblings, adoption and contact, fostering before adoption and ethnicity and adoption matching have now found themselves in law as part of the new Children and Families Act."

Yes exactly. We can see why Sir Martin Narey was appointed Chair of the new Adoption Leadership Board.

Along with the £19 million adoption support fund to help adoptive families access the support they need, the adoption reform grant has been extended into 2014 - providing £50 million to councils to help support them in implementing the changes in the Children and Families Act. These changes speed up the adoption process and make it more difficult for parents to fight the system. The intention is clear. The pendulum has swung against keeping families together and the number of adoptions are sure to rise. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over-96000-people-contact-adoption-information-service-in-12-months 

Interestingly, the University of York researchers are launching a new multi-disciplinary project to examine what works best for abused or neglected children – going into care or staying at home with support. It will run from April 2014 to March 2016.  Professor Nina Biehal, from York’s Department of Social Policy and Social Work, is leading the project. She said:  "We do not yet know enough about whether abused and neglected children who go into care do better or worse when compared to similar children who are supported at home, rather than to all children in the wider population."  It appears the Government is rushing ahead anyway.
http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2014/research/born-in-bradford/