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10.2 Adoption Service Statement of Purpose

This chapter is new for February 2011.


Contents

  1. Principles of Service
  2. Aims and Objectives of Service
  3. Staffing - Adoption and Permanency Teams
  4. The Adoption Service - Monitoring and Evaluation
  5. Recruitment, Preparation, Assessment, Approval and Support
  6. Complaints
  7. Registration


1. Principles of Service

To provide a comprehensive service to meet the needs in relation to adoption of all those involved in the ‘’adoption triangle’’ – the birth family, the adopted child, the adoptive family and the adult adoptee.

  1. To offer the opportunity of family life through adoption to Looked After children aged from 0-17 years, where there is no other viable option for providing the child with permanency within their birth family or extended family.
  2. To offer the opportunity of family life in an adoptive placement that meets the child’s assessed identity, racial, cultural, linguistic and religious needs.
  3. To offer adoptive family placements that can adequately meet the assessed needs of the children concerned, taking fully into account the child’s wishes and feelings.
  4. The particular needs of disabled children will be fully recognised and taken into account when decisions are made.
  5. To place brothers and sisters together wherever possible, consistent with the assessment of the children’s individual needs.
  6. To work in a spirit of partnership with parents or persons with Parental Responsibility and in all but exceptional cases involving them appropriately at all stages of the assessment, planning and review process.
  7. To promote direct or indirect contact with the child’s birth family, as agreed in the Adoption Support Plan, to enable children wherever possible to maintain links and positive relationships with their birth families and to ensure that all plans and arrangements for contact are reviewed to meet the developing needs of the child or young person, except where this is not possible, to ensure that children receive full information about their birth heritage and the reasons for their being placed in an adoptive family.
  8. To arrange through a Service Level Agreement with the Inter-country Adoption Centre the provision of information, preparation and assessment for those applicants wishing to adopt a child from overseas. To provide follow up reports to the country of origin; to visit and review children brought into Wandsworth for the purpose of adoption in accordance with Adoption Agency Regulations 2005 (FER); and to provide annual review of inter-country adopters who have been waiting for 12 months or more for a child to be matched.
  9. To comply fully with the relevant Adoption Agency Regulations, Guidance and National Minimum Standards in the provision of the service


2. Aims and Objectives of Service

  1. To actively seek adoptive families for children who are looked after by Wandsworth Borough Council where adoption is the permanence plan, minimising the length of time that children have to wait for a permanent adoptive family in accordance with best practice and government targets.
  2. To recruit, prepare and approve adopters to provide a range of placements to meet the diverse needs of children looked after in the Borough of Wandsworth and, where this provision is insufficient or untimely, to make arrangements for adoptive placements through inter-agency agreements.
  3. To recruit, prepare and approve adopters able to provide safe care that maximises a child’s life chances
  4. To recruit, prepare and approve adopters so as to provide a child centred service where the needs of the children are paramount and where the views of the children are heard and responded to.
  5. To recruit, prepare and approve adopters who fully understand the importance of the heritage and background of the birth family of the child, and who will be able to promote a secure and positive sense of identity in the child as he or she grows up.
  6. To provide suitably experienced and qualified social workers in the Adoption and Permanence team and Family Plus Team to assist and advise in the planning of each adoptive placement and to liaise with children’s social work teams in matters of permanence planning.
  7. The Team Around the Child comprising the child’s new family, child’s social worker, the family’s social worker and other professionals will work closely to promote the child’s welfare and enhance his/her life opportunities. This will include paying particular attention to children’s identity, educational, health and leisure needs, and to their social and emotional development. To involve parents fully in this process whenever possible.
  8. To provide through the Family Plus team an Adoption Support Service to:
    1. looked after children placed with adopters by Wandsworth Children’s Services
    2. families with adopted children living in the Borough of Wandsworth.
    3. To provide a sensitive and personal response to adults seeking information about their adoption and to take a signposting role in relation to those adults seeking an ‘intermediary service’.


3. Staffing - Adoption and Permanency Teams

The Manager of the Adoption Service is:

Ray Wright
Wandsworth Council
Children’s Services Department
4th Floor, Welbeck House
Wandsworth High Street
London SW 18 2PU
Email: raywright@wandsworth.gov.uk
Tel No: 020 8871 7252

Ray Wright is a qualified social worker;
(MSW - Bedford College, University of London 1980)

He holds a Certificate in Management qualification (2006) and has 6 years residential children’s social work and management experience, plus 25 years family placement experience and 11 years Adoption Management experience.

The Manager of the Adoption Support Service (known as the Family Plus Team) is:

Denise Lawes
Wandsworth Council
Children’s Services Department
1st Floor, Welbeck House
Wandsworth High Street
London
SW18 2PU
Email: dlawes@wandsworth.gov.uk
Tel Number 0208 871 7632

She is a qualified social worker Dip ASS and CQSW Goldsmiths College University of London 1980. She has two years residential experience and 30 years experience as a practitioner and manager specialising in Child Protection, and Permanency Planning

The current staffing establishment is as follows:

Adoption and Permanence Team:

6.5 Full time equivalent Social Workers
2 FTE Principal Social Workers
1 FTE Team Administrator;
0.5 FTE Panel Administrator.

Adoption Support Team:

3.4 Full Time Equivalent Social Workers
1 Principal Social Worker
1 Administrator

The Adoption and Permanence Manager, Adoption Support Manager, Principal Social Workers and Social Workers hold social work qualifications and substantial post qualification experience in children and families work including direct experience of adoption work. They are all registered with the General Social Care Council.


4. The Adoption Service - Monitoring and Evaluation

The Adoption Service includes the social workers, their managers and administrators in:

  • the specialist Children In Need and Children Looked After teams,
  • in the Family Plus Team (Adoption support) and
  • Adoption and Permanency Team.

Case responsibility is transferred between social work teams in accordance with the Divisions Case Transfer Protocol. The child’s Care Plan sets out the roles and responsibilities of the various professionals involved at any point in time.

All Care Plans are reviewed as required by regulation and reviews are chaired by an Independent Reviewing Officer; children aged under 5 yrs with adoption as the care plan are reviewed every 3 months, other children have their care plans formally reviewed as least every 6 months.

The Assistant Director (Children’s Specialist Services) is the designated senior manager with responsibility for Adoption. The Family Plus Team Manager is the Council’s Adoption Support Services Adviser.

To ensure close scrutiny and proper co-ordination of care planning and family finding and to quickly identify and deal with any delays, regular Permanency Planning Meetings on individual children are chaired by the relevant Team Manager. This process is closely monitored by the CLA Social Work Manager through a Permanency Tracking System.

Management information on the performance of the Adoption service is reported regularly to the Management Team and to the Assistant Director (Children’s Specialist Services). The Assistant Director keeps the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services appraised of Adoption Service performance through their regular performance monitoring meetings. Reports dealing with the performance of the Adoption Service, any proposed changes and national policy and best practice issues are regularly presented to the Executive side of the Council.


5. Recruitment, Preparation, Assessment, Approval and Support

  1. Recruitment. Publicity and recruitment plans promote applications from enquirers who live both locally and at a distance from Wandsworth. There is an emphasis on recruiting adopters who can meet children’s health, educational, racial, cultural and religious needs, as well as meeting the needs of disabled children. Applicants can be married, single or unmarried couples, and of any sexual orientation. The service aims to broadcast the message that we seek individuals and couples, from whatever background, who wish to make a permanent commitment to a child or sibling group through adoption. We particularly focus our advertising on seeking adopters for black and mixed race children and for adopters who are able to consider placements of siblings, because of our deficit in these areas.

Adopters for specific children looked after by Wandsworth council are routinely sought by both advertising in the specialist Adoption journal ’Be My Parent’ and putting information on their website.

Wandsworth subscribes to the LondonKids website, which links to the UKkids and Adoption and Fostering Information Line (AFIL) websites. Recruitment advertising is placed in a range of different publications, including local newspapers and Metro and Evening Standard, South London Press in order to make sure we reach all sections of the community. We are members of the South London Adoption Consortium, where members share information on approved families and children on a monthly basis.

  1. Enquiries. Enquiries can be made by phone, letter, fax, email, or in person. Enquirers are given appropriate advice if they are not considered to be suitable to adopt and the reasons given (for example if the enquirer is living in obviously unsuitable accommodation). Enquirers are normally invited to an Information evening where they are able to obtain information from specialist adoption social workers and from experienced adopters.

Information packs are provided at the information evening. The information pack details the range of families we are seeking to recruit and gives details of local Voluntary Adoption Agencies who can assist if the enquirer decides they wish to take this alternative route to assessment and approval.

The Assessing Social workers discuss what applicants can offer in terms of the known profiles of need for children approved for adoption. If they do not meet Wandsworth’s current need or anticipated need they will be advised of other Adoption Agencies who may be able to accept their application. If the application meets the profile of need, the family will be contacted and arrangements made for an initial visit at home by a family placement social worker to make a preliminary assessment. Prior to this visit the applicant will be sent a letter making clear the agency’s expectations about the kind of information that must be disclosed as part of the assessment process. Wherever possible the agency allocates as standard practice two social workers to undertake the initial visit together in order to provide fairness to the applicants, triangulation for the agency, and safety for the workers.

  1. Preparation. The formal application to adopt is taken up before the preparation group. Applicants are expected to attend fully the preparation and training course prior to full assessment. Inter country adopters attend the preparation courses run by the Inter-country Adoption Centre.

The preparation course is part of the overall assessment process and at the end a follow up home visit is normally offered. A decision is taken with each applicant as to whether they wish to proceed.

  1. Assessment. All applicants are allocated an Assessment Social Worker or in some cases where resources permit two social workers may be jointly allocated. In all cases , a second opinion visit is undertaken as standard and good practice. An Attachment Style Interview is also undertaken as standard except for second time applications. Peer group supervision is additionally provided for the workers undertaking the ASI interview.

Full statutory checks and references are taken up for applicants who successfully complete the preparation course. A detailed home assessment study will be undertaken of the background, skills, understanding and competencies required to successfully adopt a child from another family. The BAAF model of assessment is followed and adoption team workers undertake the BAAF training as an expected part of their training needs. The BAAF Prospective Adopters Report is used for reporting to the Adoption Panel.

The Prospective Adopters Report is made available to applicants for comment. Applicants have a right to 10 working days to consider and comment on the report before it is presented to the Adoption Panel and are invited, encouraged and supported to attend the panel in person. Single applicants may be invited to bring an appropriate person to support them while attending the panel if they wish.

The assessment process is normally completed in less than 8 months from application, which is the period indicated for a full assessment in the Adoption Agency Regulations.

  1. Panel. Wandsworth’s Adoption Panel meets twice each month on a Wednesday afternoon. The Adoption Agency regulations set out the membership requirements for Panels; Wandsworth Panels are properly constituted under the Adoption Agency Regulations. There is an independent Chair for the panel (not employed by the authority) who has substantial specialist knowledge and experience of adoption.

Applicants are invited to attend Panel for the discussion part of the agenda. They are asked to leave during the Panel’s deliberations. The Panel’s recommendation is verbally communicated to the applicants by the Panel Chair on the same day. After consideration by the Panel, the Panel Chair sends recommendations in writing to the Assistant Director (Children’s Specialist Services) (the ‘’Agency Decision-Maker’’) for decision. The Assistant Director normally discusses the recommendations with the Panel Chair and/or Panel Adviser before making decisions.

Where an applicant to adopt does not agree with the decision of the Agency Decision Maker, s/he is informed of their right to appeal to the agency or to the Independent Review Mechanism and advised as to the process for conducting such an appeal.

  1. Support. The support an adoptive family will be carefully considered as part of the assessment and approval process: this will then contribute to the Adoption Support Plan for the individual child (ren) to be placed.

The child’s social worker working in collaboration with a social worker from the Family Plus Team is responsible for co-ordinating the adoption support assessment and plan for a particular child, and for its initial implementation. Wandsworth adopts a Team Around the Child approach to ensure that all children who receive a service have plan which clearly identifies who in the family and professional network has responsibility for individual aspects of the support package. When the child [ren] no longer needs a social work service the child’s social worker will withdraw and the responsibility for the adoption support plan will transfer to the Family Plus Team. During the final stages of the involvement of the child(ren) social worker, and if the child[ren] continues to have additional needs, the Team Around the Child will have identified who will remain the Lead Professional. Where appropriate, the social worker will negotiate the transfer of adoption support responsibilities to appropriate local agencies in the area in which the adoptive family live. The placing authority retains responsibility in full for the period of three years from the date of the Full Adoption Order.

The assessment for support will cover the following areas:-

  1. Financial support (one off payments and ongoing allowances)
  2. Support Groups;
  3. Contact arrangements;
  4. Accessing local health and education services
  5. Access to therapeutic services;
  6. Services to prevent family breakdown; and
  7. Counselling, advice and information.

Support services to adopters and their families living in the Borough will be co-ordinated through the Family Plus Team.

Support services to Birth Families

Adopted adults seeking information and their birth families will be provided with the service from the Adoption and Permanency Team, which will also provide ‘’Schedule 2’’ counselling.


6. Complaints

The Council’s complaints procedure which is set out in the leaflet ‘Your Right to Complain’ applies to the Adoption Service. The procedure has three stages and our aim is to resolve all disputes and complaints at the first stage wherever possible by attending to all comments that we receive and giving service users a speedy and complete response.


7. Registration

From 1st April 2007 the responsibility for inspection is held by:

OFSTED
Royal Exchange Buildings
St Ann’s Square
MANCHESTER M2 7LA.

Responsibility for inspection of Wandsworth Council’s Adoption Service in February 2008 was undertaken by Rosemary Chapman, Lead Inspector,
OFSTED
Building C
Cumberland Place, Nottingham NG1 6HJ.

OFSTED National Business Unit tel 08456 404040
Email: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk
Website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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