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?

Why is that Maryz? Just because the governments don't have an adoption agreement?

I think it's a shame really, especially for hard-to-place children who live in Northern Ireland. What's worse, a lifetime in care, or moving the astronomical distance from, say, Belfast to Dublin? I actually really don't think anyone sensible would raise objections to negotiating international adoptions in these circumstances. It would be different if we were thinking thousands of miles and sending children to the US and Canada.

There are occasionally children from the UK adopted outside the UK (though usually it is kinship adoption, many of those would be children who would have otherwise needed adoption from care within the UK - so the same type of children adopted within the UK).

If these children were going over the border from NI to Ireland that would seem like a perfect solution.

I don't see how because as you say the children who are adopted into Ireland from other countries are free for adoption under various laws, including from countries where parental consent is dispensed with in some situations. A foreign country is a foreign country, whether it's the UK or Ethiopia or Russia.

This is something on the steps that US agencies take when they are placing a child in Ireland. It says that either the birth parents OR the "institution with lawful authority" need to be aware blah blah blah which implies that children who were removed from their parents in the US and whose parents' rights were involuntarily terminated, and for whom the body responsible is now the social care system (same as in the UK) could be adopted into Ireland.

Bother - forgot the link

adoption.state.gov/content/pdf/US-Irish_Operating_Arrangement_Outline_for_ASPs.pdf

If a voluntary agency in NI wanted to start working with couples in Ireland, I bet they'd get their hand bitten off.

They would need to look at how the other agencies that work with Irish couples operate, and get an agreement in principle from the Irish government, much as they've got this agreement with the US.

(I have a good online friend who is Irish and also adopting from overseas so I've been hearing all about the comings and goings and how it works when Ireland decides to work with a new country etc. Even though overseas adoption is not that well set up in the UK, it still seems less traumatic than in Ireland!)

So why is it OK to adopt a child who's been in foster care in the US then (or is everyone pretending it doesn't happen - I'm not completely sure it does but it can!)?

And would the Irish in general not prefer that Northern Irish children be adopted within Ireland than go to the horrible English heathen?

Maryz - the latest stats for Northern Ireland adoptions are here

I doubt NI children leave NI, however in rare cases it works the other way. I read a news article about a gay couple in Northern Ireland who signed on with an English VA because they wouldn't succeed in adoption as a gay couple in NI and adopted English children

Mary- what is the child protection system like in Ireland?
I find it very sad that a child has to stay in FC long term, do many parents agree to adoption?

Maryz I had no idea that was how things worked in Ireland. Is it as a reaction to the past where unmarried mums were sent away and forced to relinquish their babies? (apologies if that's not an accurate view, my Irish history is based on Hollywood )

I think in NI most non-family adopters are also approved as foster carers for a technical reason - so they may mainly be straight adopters. But it's still quite low.

That is terrible Mary. Its quite an eyeopener to see what other countries do

When we adopted in the UK at least one of us was required to be domiciled in the UK, and we both had to have been resident in the UK for a certain period of time. While they can't require a family to stay in the UK after the adoption is finalised, I can see why it would be preferable from the child's point of view for the family to be likely to stay in the UK, they can access post adoption services, they have preference in entering the school system, if the adoption disrupts social services are on hand etc. I really doubt that it would be at all beneficial to the children for the UK to allow adoption to Ireland, mostly because younger children with few issues are easily placed within the UK, so the children who most struggle to find a family would be the ones available to foreign adopters. But because of their issues those are the children who most need to access post-adoption services (which don't really exist in Ireland) and are most likely to have a disrupted placement.

I didn't realise post adoption support in Ireland was so bad

Which reminds me, I forgot to include the stat for post adoption support in my original post:

"For children who were adopted between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013, LAs received requests for post adoption support assessments from 1,122 families. Of these requests, 911 (81%) went on to have support provided during the year. Of the support provided, 83% (752) were provided by the LA and 17% (159) were commissioned to other agencies to provide the support"

In addition nearly 8,000 adult adoptees received adoption support (eg. their birth records, counselling), 90% from LA's

And in addition to this, 5,899 adoption support packages were provided to all families, both pre- and post order