XII. Waiting for a Placement, Page 2

The Adoption Register for England and Wales

If you are approved to adopt by an agency in England or Wales (even if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland) there is also the Adoption Register for England and Wales. This agency was established in mid-2001 by the government and is operated for the government by Norwood (which is also an adoption agency) in London. Under the new adoption regulations all children in local authority care must have a decision made as to whether adoption is the best plan for them. If the decision is to place the child for adoption, and the child is in care under the Children Act 1989, sections 20 or 31, the agency has three months from the date of that decision to find a family for the child themselves. If no family is found within the allotted time the child’s details (which are supposed to be submitted to the Adoption Register as soon as the adoption plan is approved) go “live”, and she is eligible to be matched via the Register.

Approved prospective adopters' details are also supposed to be submitted to the Register immediately on approval and go "live" three months after approval, if they have not been matched with a child by then. After the three months, you can approach the Register to check that your details have been submitted.

Both children and approved families can veto being placed on the Register, but the local authority has no veto — unless the child or family vetoes registration their details must be sent to the Register. Voluntary adoption societies are not obligated to use the Register, but they are encouraged to do so.

If you are applying for a child with special needs you should check with your social worker a week or so after approval to be sure your details have been sent to the Register (remember, the details are supposed to be submitted immediately, not at the end of the three months the agency has to match you with a child).

After their details go “live”, the Register’s computer is used daily to find possible matches between families and children waiting. If and when a match is made it is reviewed by a social worker at the Register. Then if she feels the match might be suitable she contacts the child’s and the prospective adopters’ social workers with the details, and they decide whether they agree that the match is good. If they approve the match goes to the child’s adoption panel in the same way as any other match.

The service differs from other clearing houses in that local authorities are required to use it; it is not optional. But there is still scope for abuse of the system by uncooperative agencies and social workers, foot-dragging in the submission of children’s and families’ details and in processing matches suggested by the Register, and also in rejecting suitable matches on spurious grounds. Most of us who have been through the system have seen or heard of this kind of unprofessional institutional and personal behaviour. The service is still in its infancy. But the record after the first two years of operation is not encouraging. There were 10,000 children and prospective adopters on the Register, but only 75 matches were made.

Photo-Listings Services and Regional Clearing Houses

There are regional clearing houses in the country serving several adjoining local authorities for children who have been unable to find new families from the resources of their own agency. Your agency will automatically check with their regional clearing house (if any) after a couple of months, if they can’t place a child with you themselves. The former national clearing houses operated by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (called BAAFlink) and by Adoption UK have both been wound up. However, both BAAF and Adoption UK continue to publish photo-listings journals: BAAF publishes Be My Parent, which comes out 10 times a year and features upwards of 300 children in each issue. Adoption UK’s comes out bimonthly as an optional supplement to their magazine Adoption Today, and is called Children Who Wait. The December 2001 issue carried listings for 242 children. Be My Parent costs £30 per year. Children Who Wait comes free with membership of Adoption UK, which costs £25 per year. For information on how to subscribe to these, contact the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and Adoption UK. Individual agencies and regional consortia of agencies also have web sites which may feature children waiting for new families. A good starting place to find these Internet listings is the Adoption & Fostering Information Line web site.

Be My Parents lists children who are available for placement anywhere in the country, while Children Who Wait also lists children who may have some conditions attached to their placement, usually geographical. Many children appear in both publications, and some of the children listed are also available for application by not-yet-approved families. Approved adopters will have a better chance of being considered for such children than people who apply before they have been approved, unless an unapproved couple is obviously more appropriate for the child than any approved family. Be My Parent carries short articles on aspects of adoption as well as the profiles of children. For example, the December 1999 issue had articles on National Adoption Week, profiles of some adoptive families, a photo of the staff who work on Be My Parent, on post-adoption contact with the birth family, what makes a good adopter, how to help applicants come to realise that adoption is not right for them at the present time, why some children behave badly in their new families, what “family” means in terms of who can adopt, what kinds of children are waiting for adoption, and how an adoption panel comes to its decisions.

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