Supporting adoption: vision and priorities - statement

6. Our Strategic Priorities

This section highlights five priorities which will help us deliver on our vision for adoption. These are designed to respond directly to what our adoption community, including people with lived experience of adoption, have told us, and what has been set out in Section 5 in terms of meeting the needs of everyone impacted by adoption.

The five priorities are set out below.

Recognising adoption as the best permanence option for some of our children

Alongside our collective focus on keeping children with birth families wherever safe, possible, and right for the child, adoption should be valued and progressed as the best permanence option for some of our children, as we work to Keep The Promise by 2030.

We will prioritise work which delivers clear and consistent messaging at a national level to help ensure that adoption continues to be recognised, valued and progressed as the best permanence option for some of our children.

Best practice to support timely adoption and good transitions

Deciding that a child will live permanently away from their birth family is an extremely serious decision. The evidence for placing a child for adoption and granting full parental rights and responsibilities to adoptive parents is rightly high and subject to detailed scrutiny.

As such, the process is complex, involving local authorities, the children’s hearings system and Scottish courts as well as other organisations and individuals. Importantly, families must be given opportunities to participate in the process.

Current workforce pressures, capacity and resource across all the sectors involved in the adoption process can make it difficult to retain and develop the expertise needed to progress adoption in the timescales that are right for the child.

A critical element of avoiding delay is also about ensuring that our adoptive parents who are recruited, assessed, approved and prepared across Scotland are best placed to be promptly matched and best meet the children’s needs now and in the future. There can be a mismatch between the adopters available and the needs of the children awaiting adoption. We know that there are some children who wait longer, and this can include children who are older in age, part of a sibling group, and who have additional support needs, which can include support needs related to behaviour, mental health and/or physical health.

We have been told that once the right match has been made and when the transition to adoption then takes place, excellent support can help to ensure the long-term success of the adoption.

We will prioritise work which equips the workforce to find loving homes for children as quickly as possible. This will include supporting best practice to avoid drift and delay, to ensure prompt matching to families who are well placed to meet their needs, and to ensure that transitions to adoption are well supported.

Adoptive parent

"Adopting our daughter is the best thing that we could have done. But it's been challenging for us to be able to give her everything she needs to support her, to the best of our abilities. External support for families is essential from the earliest point. This is to make sure that our children receive the help that they need to achieve everything they deserve."

Best practice to support family time and life journey work

The adoption landscape has changed significantly in recent decades, with an increased focus on supporting adoptees to understand their life journey. This can help our adoptees to understand who they are and why they were adopted, and help a child integrate their past into their present and future.

Modernising adoption involves a continued focus on supporting adoptees to keep in touch with their birth parents, siblings and other important relationships such as former carers, where this is safe and appropriate. Keeping in touch can be done in different ways, for example through supported exchanges of messages, or time together in person.

Maintaining these relationships can be challenging to navigate, and the rise of social media and digital communication can present additional issues to consider.

This must be supported by best practice at various stages, including relationship mapping and planning before an adoption takes place. This helps set expectations and enables long term contact, while recognising the need to keep arrangements flexible and responsive to changes in people’s lives.

We will prioritise work which develops and embeds modern best practice around supported family time and life journey work.

Consistent and comprehensive post-adoption support

The Promise Plan 24-30 emphasises the importance of availability, quality and consistency of support services for everyone impacted by adoption, for as long as they are needed. Adoption support should include a range of multi-disciplinary universal and specialist services.

Under the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007, local authorities have a duty to assess someone’s needs for adoption support services and then provide that support. We recognise that current budgetary and workforce pressures can impact on the implementation of this duty, which can result in inconsistent support, in particular post-adoption and at transition points such as adolescence.

Once a child is adopted, they are no longer ‘looked after’^[2] in the care of their local authority. However, our adopted children are still care experienced and as a result of the adversity they have experienced, they may need particular support to thrive, for example in terms of health, education, and wellbeing.

If these impacts and needs are not recognised in a timely manner, it can make it difficult for adoptees to access the trauma informed and responsive support and services that they need. Early recognition of these needs can increase the positive impact that any post-adoption support will have, and mitigate against the risk of adoption breakdown. Everyone working with adoptive families must recognise that these needs are commonplace, and make support available at an early stage.

We will prioritise work in collaboration with stakeholders to improve the availability and consistency of post-adoption support across Scotland.

Lifelong support

Adoption is lifelong so everyone impacted by an adoption journey will require support at various stages throughout life, including in adulthood. This may include accessing universal services and/or accessing bespoke services. These universal and specialist services should understand adoption and the impact it can have through adulthood.

The Promise is clear that by 2030, all our care experienced children, young people, families and adults should have access to independent advocacy support, at all stages of their experience of care and beyond. As part of this, families should be supported to understand and advocate for their rights and entitlements.

We will prioritise work which supports key services to recognise and respond to the particular needs of adult adoptees, and we will explore what more we can do to ensure that people are able to access the right information where and when they need it.