Adopt South West’s Annual report

We’ve published our Annual Report for 2021 to 2022 (also find a link at the bottom of our website home page).

One of our key principles has been to place children from the Adopt South West region with local families. In 2021 to 2022 we matched 126 children with their new families.

We are able to place under Early Permanence (fostering for adoption and concurrency) and out of the 126 children placed 42 started their placement under fostering for adoption regulations. This means that 35.7% of our children were placed with their family at the earliest possible stage. This represents one of the highest rates in the country!

Adoption support referrals have more than doubled since COVID-19 and continue to rise. Going forward, Post Adoption Support Managers believe that there needs to be either more clinical oversight with regards to assessments and recommendations, or further assessment training for staff that is facilitated by a psychologist. Adopt South West is building stronger working relationships with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to develop a collaborative working model to meet the needs of those children and young people.

Maintaining significant relationships has become a stronger priority as we develop services to support adoptees to understand their story and to stay in touch with people who matter to them. We are working closely with the National Adoption Support Group on workstreams that will build a picture of adoption services across the country and enable planning for the next phase of improvements, determining what a national adoption support core offer will look like.