I don't know. There seem to me to be three aspects to this: The first being the time that prospective adopters wait until matching; the second being that it apparently has become harder to obtain placement orders; and the third being the point of there being more approved prospective adopters than children waiting for adoption.
First, though matching seems to take longer than some prospective adopters seem to expect, it still seems to be, usually, shorter than it used to be. Purely from anecdotal evidence from reading forums such as this one, and books on real life experiences of adoption, it seems that much longer timeframes used to be the norm than are now.
To address this, I think one would need to work on prospective adopters' expectations, primarily - it needs to be clear that whilst matching may be very quick, it may equally take quite a while. Further, in the matching period, I should think there are a few things that may improve the experience for prospective adopters, such as transparency/being kept in the loop.
In order to actually (further) reduce time to matching (for adopters), I think centralisation would be the key. Initiatives like adoption-link, or that the national adoption register will become 'searchable' by approved prospective adopters (from September), are moves in that direction. Because delays in matching that are caused purely by a mismatch of location (the 'perfect' match for a child happens to live/have been approved outside of the child's LA) are quite pointless and harmful to all sides IMO.
However, never should the decision about a child's future be influenced by prospective adopters' needs/desires to not have to wait long for a match.
The second part of all this seems to me to be the point about delays in getting placement orders due to changing jurisdiction. I don't have any way of knowing this but I trust that the courts do genuinely try to come to decisions that are in the best interest of the child(ren). If the courts' judgement as to what is in the best interest of the child has changed, I trust that this is not for political or economical reasons but purely because insights have been gained/are now being applied, which are thought to be in the interest of the child.
So if a court denies a LA's application for a placement order, in the first instance, I trust that this is genuinely believed to be best for the child - even if they go on to grant it later, thus having caused a 'needless' delay for the child. The court has weighed the possible detriment caused by the delay by the detriments of possibly reaching the wrong decision and has decided in the interest of the child.
If there is a problem here, IMO it lies at the point where applications for placement orders get denied because the LA wasn't properly aware of the changed jurisdiction and only for that reason didn't provide some now newly required evidence. This is the point where these delays become properly needless - they are caused, ultimately, by communication problems between the legal system and social services; and can not be seen as in the interest of the child in any way. Applications for placement orders shouldn't be being rejected en masse; rather, the standard for those applications should very quickly be adapting to the new legal requirements.
The third part, well I for one would be glad if there were truly more prospective adopters than children waiting to be adopted. I am not sure if that is the case - does anyone have any statistics apart from the e-mail by adoption-link mentioned earlier? My impression was that there is in effect a huge 'back-log' of children waiting for adoption, with new children joining them daily; so that even if more prospective adopters are being recruited, than new children being given placement orders, it will take quite a while for that 'back-log' to be cleared.
In an 'ideal' world, once there is a placement order, a child should not have to 'wait' for more than a week to be matched, IMO. Most certainly should they not have to wait months or even years. For this to be possible, there would have to always be quite a few more prospective adopters 'waiting' than children - children shouldn't be waiting at all!
The problem here is that it is not purely a numbers game. There is the issue of geographical mismatch as well as the mismatch of which children need adoption as opposed to what kinds of children people want to adopt. Combine those two mismatches, and you get children AND prospective adopters waiting everywhere.
Now I'd say whatever you do, you will always have 'easier to place' and 'harder to place' children; and if you want to recruit enough prospective adopters for all the 'harder to place' children, you will probably have plenty more than enough for the 'easer to place' children. So in order for all children being able to be matched quickly after placement order, you'd need to
-centralise
-recruit lots and lots of prospective adopters, so that you get enough for the 'harder to place' children
-accept that many prospective adopters will have to wait for a match;
unless you find a way to recruit exactly the right kind of prospective adopters, on a national scale, for the children needing adoption, again on a national scale.
And here is a little conundrum - if you want to recruit masses of prospective adopters (in order to prevent delays in matching for children), you need to make adoption 'attractive' - and the prospect of having to wait around for an indeterminate, possibly very long time, possibly being in competition for a child but rejected in favour of someone else, possibly several times, etc. - is certainly not very enticing!
The solution to this conundrum would be to find a way to recruit, specifically, prospective adopters for 'harder to place' children - and that never will be easy.
(by the way, before anyone gets offended - I do not think that anyone who is currently waiting for a match is waiting because they only want to consider 'easy to place' children. No, I believe the main culprit is the decentralised mess there is - meaning that many potential matches aren't made, for no good reason at all; with both the child(ren) and prospective adopters waiting. When all it needs is someone to connect them.)
In sum, no I don't think they have overdone it with the drive for new adopters; however, in addition/ or if necessary instead of that, it would have been more efficient to focus on recruiting adopters specifically for harder to place children, rather than just generally recruiting prospective adopters. And it would be even more efficient, in the first instance, to improve matching by ensuring that matches aren't missed/delayed just because the prospective adopters live elsewhere than the child(ren).
And, finally, sorry for epic post!
