Just 60 babies adopted last year in England

[Himalaya]

From The Guardian (and government stats)

The number of babies adopted in England fell to 60 last year despite a sharp rise in the number of children in care.

The total number of adoptions has continued to drop, falling by 5% to 3,050 in the past year, according to Department for Education statistics.

The number of babies adopted fell more sharply, to 60, compared with 70 in the previous year and 150 in 2007. This compares with about 4,000 in 1976.

The number of children placed for adoption also fell to 2,450, a decline of 10% since 2007.

The decline comes despite the statistics also showing there are 65,520 children in care, the highest number since 1987, with 3,660 of them under a year old.

Children's minister Tim Loughton said: "Today's statistics are a timely reminder that we must redouble our efforts to do better for children in care. It's worrying that the number of adoptions has continued to decline, and it's simply not good enough for vulnerable children to be waiting well over two years to be adopted."

Discuss....

My adopted daughter and i made this clip with her toys this afternoon to try and encourage more adopters to come forward.

It took me 6 years to get her, but even still, it was worth the wait. I am so pleased that press like this will help give momentum to the push to get a more welcoming attitude to prospective adopters.

I think the process does take a long time because it is complicated, important and probably massively underfunded.

My DH has worked in children's services as well as for a fostering agency. They do try to match the race of parents and children, and I believe the majority of the former are white, but non-white for the latter.

Fostering is up, though; a lot more couples do it these days. People who do fostering generally need the money (in order to look after children, ie a parent not working - I don't mean they do it for the money) whereas if you adopt you don't have any help with income. You have to be whiter than white to adopt or foster, and there are lots of rules, eg weight and smoking.

Also, many parents prefer to try IVF, so adoption may not be as popular in comparison.

The race issue does make a difference. My friend is a British Indian and became pg by a white boy, a huge taboo in her culture but she didn't feel able to have an abortion so she got in touch with SS to sort out adoption. They put on a huge amount of pressure for her to keep the child, using emotive terms like suggesting that she'd never really know if the child would be well-cared for and the adoptive parents could be abusive.

She'd got in touch with them while she was pg and she was determined to hand the baby over, but SS wouldn't take any steps to seek out a family during all that time. She happened to live in an area where there weren't many Indian families (much less one with a mixed Indian-white couple) but they wouldn't look outside the local area either. The baby had to go to an emerg foster care placement, was shuffled around a lot and wasn't adopted until he was four - in the end he did have to go to a white couple as there were just no other couples there. I am sure the poor boy would have settled much better if he had simply been placed as a baby rather than four years later.

That is not about race you simply don't understand how difficult it is

Majority of sw are opposed to adoption hence trying to convince your friend to keep the child and as the child is half White I can't really see what the issue is as it would be just the same as him going to a Asian family to be honest the amount of mixed couple their are in the uk let alone ones who adopt

The biggest pool of mixed relationship is between black and white so ergo the amount of couple who are mixed Asian and white will be minute

But like I said its very sad it takes so long whilst judges think the best place for a child is with its parent regardless of wether the parent wants the child or not and whilst article 8 is I place things will never change

rhym........upto 28k per year?????
what foster carer gets that, crikey! i have never received anything like that, my LO (yes her not me) gets £5408 per year and thats it!
i would quite happily adopt everyone of the little ones i foster but if i did that i wouldnt be able to help any more babies, as i only have room for 1!
all my babies have come to me at birth and not moved to adopters until they were nearly 3, mostly down to the sw being off sick 40% of the year, or paperwork not being done or going missing, or because they have such a huge caseload that they simply do not have the time, it doesnt help when there is so much red tape and the courts mess about for so long.
it is very very frustrating.
our last little one was being adopted by relatives (a cousin) and it had been arranged since the mum was 3 months pregnant, he then (for reasons i wont go into on here) came to us at 1 week old but he didnt move in with the cousin until he was 2 years and 7 months, the reason? his social worker was off sick for 7 months and his case was not transferred to somebody else.
the system stinks, and is very intrusive. i understand the checks that have to be done, and the family background etc, (for matching purposes) but some agencies have it completed within 6 months whereas la's take as long as they want. in my opinion all children should be adopted by the the time they are 9 months old, as that is when they start to form strong bonds and when they know who mummy is, daddy is etc. this is the age when separation anxiety kicks in. aside from all that it is very cruel and very upsetting for everyone involved when you have fostered a child from birth to almost 3 years, to see that child go. it is very confusing for the child and heartbreaking for the carer and adopters who have waited so very long for that child.
the whole system needs an overhaul and the red tape needs cutting drastically, some if not most of the rules need ditching, and they need to shorten the process or employ more staff to deal with the massive workloads.

i love fostering but i have the system and i know i am not the only carer who feels this way.

The problem is not only red tape but it is the lack of resources that the government put into children's services, with the cut backs this will only get worse. Added to this is the cuts in legal services and the already lengthy processes will get worse. I didn't get my child until she was 13 months and she had been taken into foster care at birth. There is now a half sibling currently in foster care waiting for placement and will not be placed until about 10 months old while they assess the birth family, again.

It's so frustrating, but it can be done with the right la and brilliant social workers. My ds was placed with us at under 5 months. Prior to them having our ds (from newborn), the same foster carers had another baby from newborn, placed at 6 months, and then straight after our ds left them to come to us, they had a newborn girl who was placed before 6 months. 3 babies in 18 months all placed before they were 6 months old. What's shocking to me is that one la (and one foster family) contributed 5% to the overall figure in the op!
So, it can be done, but there needs to be more cash and resources pumped into the c&yp services, and sw's need to be given the tools to do their job properly.

I think the drop in children and babies available for adoption is down to better contraception and fertility treatment, but also to changing mores whereby attitudes towards single mothers, unmarried couples, etc., are unrecognisable from 40-50 yrs ago, and there is far more social and public support for these situations. I'm glad to be living in a country where young women are not ostracised the way they were for getting pregnant. And it's never the child's fault.

I've noticed that most of these posts are from the point of view of the adopter. Bear in mind that every adoption is also someone's loss. They're not all feral drug addicts, you know.

Tark - I am very very aware of the loss suffered by my children's birth mothers. I met my DS's BM and it was heartbreaking to see what she was going through.I think about her every day.
My DD's BM is a drug addict who left her at the hospital without even naming her. I would never ever describe her as a feral drug addict. Her story is heartbreaking too - she was failed by so many people when she was growing up and she stood no chance of having a decent life. If she had been adopted as a child instead of being returned to her own drug addicted mother her life would have been so different.

Perhaps I've read it wrong but I didn't think it was about a drop in babies and children available for adoption but more about thousands of children languishing in care because the system is too slow.

Yes Pixel that was how I read it too.

Tark, I'll take that a bit further. A very hefty proportion of mothers whose children are taken into care ARE chaotic drug addicts (I won't use the feral word). AND they are human beings who have suffered appalling pain and loss. I can only speak for myself, though I suspect this is true for many of the adopters here: I don't talk much about my daughter's birth mother precisely out of respect for her, and because I don't want to edge into chatting about her life on the internet. I am always aware that she has lost her child, and my child has lost her birth mother. I don't for one second doubt that that had to happen, but believe me I don't feel good about it.

Plus, we would all agree that it would be a very good thing if there was a drop in children needing to be taken into care. However, children who need to taken into care and are not, or who need to be adopted but languish in care, is without doubt a Bad Thing.

I know a lovely couple who were desperate to adopt, but because one of them is disabled the other had to meet even tighter standards, the one they failed on in the end was losing extra weight. It seems ridiculous. They battled the system for over a year and, not making even the slightest bit of headway, gave up. It's so sad, they would make fantastic parents. I really hope they find a way somehow.

Agree totally with hester.

The figure of 60 babies is a bit misleading. It means there were only 60 babies with completed, finalized adoptions. The actual number of babies who moved into their adoptive home before the age of 1 will be high - probably at least 100

Also, since 1970, we've had such a social change, we'll never go back to what it was. It's ok to be a single mother, we've invented IVF and other fertility treatments, abortion has become socially acceptable, the welfare system improved etc It's stupid to compare figures from then with figures now and moan about it. Different world entirely

Tork - I agree that whilst adoption has brought huge benefits to my children, it's also about hurt and loss. Nowadays, very few babies are relinquished, and most of the biological mothers lead chaotic lives involving drug abuse, violence etc. I tend not to talk about my own childrens first mothers a lot, like hester

totally agree with hester. I don't know a single adoptive parent who feels anything but sympathy for their children's birth mothers. If you've never been parented yourself, how on earth can you learn how to parent?

Just going back to maypole1's point, it isn't the culture that is important to adoptive agencies as far as I know so much as skin colour when it comes to mixed race children. I know a child where there was a choice of two couples - one who had a very similar cultural background but who were white (the child is mixed race) and one where the dad had a similar skin shade to her but no connection culturally and none at all with the mother. The agency chose the 2nd couple.

Isn't the main issue here the number of children in care vs those who are actually adopted? I don't think it's as simple as saying that there are fewer children born to people who can't or won't parent adequately