Interesting Adoption Statistics!

[Lilka]

Statistics? Interesting? Really?

Okay, I found them really interesting. There were LOADS of statistics buried within a massive OFSTED report and I thought you guys might find these the most interesting.

Between 1st April 2012 and 31st March 2013, or on the 31st March 2013:

• There were 10,177 children subject to an adoption plan, of whom 46% were waiting to be matched with adoptive parents. 17% were still waiting for placement orders, 34% were placed and waiting finalisation, 3% were waiting to be placed with their matched parents

• Out of the 4,767 children placed for adoption in that year, 148 children's adoption placement disrupted, in 118 adoptive families

• This is a pre-adoption order disruption rate of 3% (which is pleasantly lower than I was expecting)

• VA's do place many more 'harder to place' children than LA's - over a third of VA adoptions were of over 5's, compared to only 20% of LA adopions. VA's placed 16% of adopted children in that year.

• The number of approved adoptive parents has increased 18% on last year, by over 700 families

• Out of all English regions, the North West has the highest proportion of approved adopters (followed closely by London), and the North East has the lowest

• The North West also has the lowest proportion of families waiting to be matched, the vast majority were matched and had children placed

• 405 foster carers were approved to adopt their foster children, and this represents a massive 45% increase on last year

• There were over 27,080 initial inquiries into adoption in that year, 5,173 of those turned into adoption applications, so less than 1 in 5

• Of those 5,173 applications, 4,093 were approved, a 34% increase on last year

• Of the 4,093 who started the full process, 12% withdrew and 1% were refused/rejected later on, leaving 87% who concluded the process

• 90% of approved adopters are white, compared to 82% of children subject to an adoption plan

• 90% of adoptive parents are heterosexual, 3% were lesbian and 3% were gay

• 64% of adopters are Christian, followed by 20% who have no religious affiliation, 2% are Muslim

• 75% of adopters were married couples

• 135 children were adopted internationally. 68% of these children were female. An entire quarter of them were aged under 1.

• 30 of these children came from Russia, 20 from China and 19 from Pakistan, so these are the 3 most popular countries to adopt from right now

Well that was long.

What do you guys think?

I'm interested in how 4% of adoptive parents appear to be either bisexual or didn't express a preference!

135 IA childen I suspect quite a few of those were family adoptions - you have to spend 3-6 months in-country to adopt from Pakistan.

I think it said data wasn't available for the rest of the parents!

I remember the two part TV program where Saira Khan adopted an abandoned baby girl from Pakistan. I couldn't help wondering whether all the coverage encouraged some Muslim families to look into a Pakistan adoption?

Gooxness lilka. You must be able to.touchtype many words a minute, I wish I could.

Pleasantly surprised by the disruption rate only being 3%. I was under the impression it was about 5%

That is fascinating. I need to digest a little, but my first comment is that I'd love to know more about what's going on behind the dropout rate at first enquiry (high) compared to the odds of not getting approved after you have applied (low). I wonder how this fits with the common belief that it is really hard to get approved, that people get turned away for all kinds of nonsense? Of course it's possible that most people who social workers disapprove of never actually put in an application, they get the message so clearly at first enquiry. (I got a flat-out refusal to even consider me from two agencies - in one case because we weren't white enough, in the other because we weren't black enough, or because we had a white birth daughter, or because we were lesbian - take your pick.) Or it could be that lots of people who make a first enquiry just want to find out more, and when they are told about the realities of adoption they decide not to proceed.

As someone in the midst of assessment, I think maybe the high initial drop-out rate can be mostly put down to people finding out that no, hardly anyone relinquishes a child, no, there aren't lots of issue-less babies needing homes and yes, it takes longer than a couple of weeks to get through the process.

I think that's a good thing, in the main, although even knowing lots of facts and having read oodles of blogs before we started, I still found one LA's information so off-putting I'm surprised they got anyone to sign up at all. It wasn't offputting in content but in tone. It was basically saying 'don't bother, you won't be good enough'. Having since dealt more than once with their Social Care Dept (Social Services safeguarding) for my job, am not surprised. They are a complete shower....

In case you are interested in comparing with some stats from a totally different country, adoption wise:

In Norway (population 5 million) in 2012 there were 457 adoptions. Out of these

231 were international adoptions
180 were step parent adoptions
46 were other kinds of adoptions

So in Norway there are more international adoptions than in the UK, even though your population is more than 10 times as big. On the other hand we have almost no domestic adoption.

Thanks Saralyn Actually, I was most suprised to see that Norway's total population is only 5 million. For some reason I just assumed there were more poeple than that!

Does Norway only does adoptions where the mother chooses to relinquish her baby?

What countries do Norwegians adopt from most? Also Russia and China?

Devora and Choccyjules I was talking to the social workers on the prep group about this, and I know my LA deals with quite a few 'going nowhere' inquiries every year - some want newborn babies*, a few are under 21, or have young birth children, some are even under the impression that you get paid to adopt! Aside from that, lots of others don't even want to start the process now, but are thinking about adopting in a few years time and just want some questions answered. And some seem to want to adopt, but just never get in touch again after an initial chat.

I'd love to see a bit of research on it to see what makes people make that initial call and why it doesn't go any further

• I remember a woman like that phoned into a radio program about adoption. Her LA told them that they could adopt older children, but she and her husband were pretty upset and annoyed because they wanted a baby. They didn't persue adoption any further

I'll bet the initial inquiries figure includes all those people who ring after international disasters to rescue a poor wide eyed cute little baby. Only the hard as nails ones like your truly actually get to bring homw their cute little wide-eyed baby

I bet it also includes a lot who are still doing IVF, or have been trying to get pregnant for about 6 months, and a few who do the prep course but get no further because people disagree with their ideas about parenting.
Plus of course multiple enquiries to different agencies (we recently rang about 5 LAs while trying to decide what to do about adopting a second time).

poster Lilka. i doubt it it's actually against Islam to adopt hence so many Muslim children waiting to be adopted.
Many Asians that adopt will be of Muslim background but not actually practicing themslefs.

drspouse
I would have been down as withdrawal however this was due to our LA slow tracking us I think this happens a lot pretty much LAs string people along having no intention of taking them to panel so they slow track,delay ECt hoping you get frustrated and with draw.

Also I wonder if the disruption includes concurrent adoption that didn't work out

And I would imagin they wouldn't usually continue on with another adoption

sadoldbag it is not "against Islam" to adopt though I am aware that opinions differ. There's a really interesting post here.

maryamlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/adoption-and-islam-islamic-perspective.html

Concurrent adoption would count as a foster placement that returned to birth family, not a disrupted adoption.

Yes thanks drspouse i was told my a lady who lives near me it's not Islamic to adopt I guess every one thinks different on these issues

Hmm before we signed up with 'our' LA we had 'initial contact' with >10 LAs/VAs. I'm actually surprised it's as many as 1 in 5 initial inquiries that go on to full assessment! To me that reads pretty much as, either we are exceptional and most people don't call around to different agencies (I assume most won't contact as many as we did, but many will get in touch with about three or so), or, pretty much everyone who picks up to phone/composes an e-mail is serious about it, is accepted into assessment somewhere, and does actually sign up for assessment. If 5 people/couples contact 3 agencies each, that makes 15 enquiries, then 3 of these will go ahead with (and be accepted into) assessment.

Thanks Lilka for those stats, where are they from?

The high enquiry rate is because each agency counts their enquiries but there isn't a system for working out if anyone enquiried to more than one agency.

Meita From a big OFSTED report called "adoption quality assurance and data"!!

You can get it here I just downloaded the MS word document "Key Findings" which describes all the stats and haven't looked at the spreadsheets

I didn't think about the multiple enquiries aspect but that's the obvious explanation for a lot of them!

Lilka He, he, yes, there are only 5million of us.

I think the biological parents have to agree to the adoption in norway , yes.
I think there are only about 5-10 relinquished babies a year. The rest of the domestic adoption must be kinship adopters and maybe fostercarers.
I remember a girl in my class at school was adopted by her foster parents.

I believe the biological parents must always consent, or in special cases maybe a judge can decide.

Children who cannot live with their parents are put in long term foster care.

The most common countries to adopt from are China, Colombia and South korea. International adoption has been halved in the last ten years, mostly because waiting times have oncreased so much i think.

Figures for Scotland ( sorry quite out of date )

496 adoptions took place in 2011

step-parent (24%/ 118)
grandparent(s) (

You will see that the overall numbers are comparable to Norway, which has a similar population

What I don't understand is in Ireland if the parents are married at the time of birth the children can not be adopted so why don't more couple from Ireland adopt from the uk rather that further a field

I think ss all over the uk have really missed a trick there although it would be classed as intonational Adoption
I so think it needs to be looked at.

Oh and do we know how many adopted adults go on to adopt I think that would be interesting