Issue - meetings

Report of the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People

Members had previously requested detail of progress made with the regional Together4Children Permanency Partnership which, since going live on 28 September 2020, had been delivering the regional adoption service for Staffordshire County Council, Shropshire Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Telford & Wrekin Council.  Partnership development activity had started in 2018 in response to the Government’s ‘Regionalising Adoption’ agenda and brought together 4 Partner Council’s to plan the delivery of adoption services regionally.

Through the development phase a vision had been created that went beyond the delivery of Adoption Services and focused on a broader range of activities to ensure that children entering care achieved permanency, working together to improve outcomes for those children who entered care and were not able to return to their birth parents. The Vision was to ensure that children achieved emotional, physical, and legal permanence; growing up in loving homes with adults who provided them with a strong sense of security, continuity, commitment, and identity. The Partnership aimed to:

a)    make best use of collective resources to recruit, assess and support prospective adopters across the region;

b)    improve the quality and speed of matching for children through better planning and by having a wider choice of adopters;

c)    provide high quality support to children and their families delivered through a combination of direct provision and effective partnerships;

d)    provide all children and their families with the right support at the right time through a consistent permanency support offer across the region.

The Committee heard about the delays resulting from the Pandemic and the work developed resulting from that. Whilst it was still early days for Together4Children there were already positive achievements in the effectiveness of encouraging enquiries from potential adopter families and in the number of successful adoptions.

One of the main aims for the new agency was to enable adoptive children to stay within their region of birth where possible. This enabled lifelong support to be offered to children and their adoptive families, through to support for adopted adults who may wish to explore their birth identity.

Members were aware that some children were more difficult to find adoptive families for, with the current most challenging groups to place being boys over 5 years and children in sibling groups.

The Committee were pleased to note that Together4Children was to be one of only two regional adoption agencies to be part of Adoption UK’s innovative ‘TESSA’ support program for adoptive families. This was a pilot program, currently funded through the Big Lottery Community Fund, which aimed to create the conditions for healthy development and family wellbeing in adoptive families at risk of the effects of early childhood trauma. Since TESSA went live in October 2020 40 families across the Together4Children region had received this support.

The Committee were also informed that in addition to the delivery of Regional Adoption Services, other areas of regional practice were being developed, supporting children who came into care to achieve stability and permanence within foster or kinship care families. Together4Children were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18