Prime Minister announces new measures to speed up adoption

2 November 2015

Following on from his conference speech at the Conservative Party Conference, the Prime Minister today unveiled further measures to increase the number of children adopted and speed up the process. The reforms aim to break down bureaucratic barriers and double the number of children placed with adoptive families and halve the time they are waiting in care.

The government has also announced that it will toughen up checks to ensure young people are placed with the best person able to care for them and not unsuitable distant relatives they have never met.

Today’s move comes after plans were unveiled in the Education and Adoption Bill to merge council adoption agencies so young people are matched with parents more quickly. Prime Minister David Cameron said:

“It is a tragedy that there are still too many children waiting to be placed with a loving family – we have made real progress but it remains a problem. As Prime Minister, I want to make sure that we do everything we can so children are placed in a loving home as soon as possible, giving them the best chance for a happy and fulfilled life.”

The reforms outlined include:

Placing children with their adoptive family sooner by focussing on early placement options e.g. fostering-for-adoption,  more thorough assessments before granting Special Guardianship Orders and new legislative powers to ensure that all councils have plans to join regional adoption agencies by 2017.

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