Agenda item

Jemma Fordham (Operations Manager, ACE Hub) informed the panel that ACE (adoption central England) celebrated its fourth birthday at the beginning of February, and it was built on the strong adoption performance in Warwickshire and existing stable management structure. One ACE’s biggest achievements was becoming the 4^th organisation globally to become a DDP (Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy) certified organisation. DDP is the kind of therapeutic approach that all ACE staff are trained in, including business support. Recently ACE recruited psychologists as part of a two-year pilot help support ACE’s families; roughly half of ACEs resources go to supporting families and understanding the kind of therapeutic needs ACE children have. This is used to support the families to through the adoption. The council’s legal team engaged with ACE on a regular basis to provide a high level of robust scrutiny for any ACE plans coming through. This included, care planning, contact planning, maintaining family relationships and issues to do with sibling relationships within adoption. There was a strong link within Warwickshire amongst the children's teams and ACE so they could get advice on adoption plans. Despite the pandemic, more children had been placed for adoption due to work with the children’s teams to get the necessary risk assessments done to manage these placements safely. Adopter approval timescales had been delayed because of the pandemic and this affecting getting medical reports through from prospective adopters, this was now being addressed. 80% of children adopted were adopted within Warwickshire which was easier to offer adoption support. ACEs foster-adoption record was very good with only four placements not moving to adoption out of 86 as of February 2021. The foster-adoption process was being reviewed to see if the take up of early permanents amongst our perspective adopters could be improved and whether they could use early permanents for children who may have a placement move. For example, older children and not just new-borns who might have to move foster placement so ACE could try and minimise the number of placement moves they have before they are adopted. The website was revamped, and this received positive feedback. New areas of practice development were being worked on which was called the ‘enhanced support care scheme’ which was daytime respite for ACE families who were struggling later on in their adoption journey because earlier support networks ‘dropped off’. Sometimes the children’s behaviour becomes more challenging, and their needs become greater as they get older. This scheme was to make sure there was a support system in place to maintain these families when it was difficult. The trends from the previous financial year were like the current financial year. Ofsted were very positive in terms of adoption and the relationship between teams in Warwickshire. The adoption panel advisors noted the improvement in the quality of the reports going to panel.

John Coleman added that the tracking of children in care was important to make sure that permanently is achieved in a timely way. The new officer was doing a phenomenal job with chasing what was happening with these children and making sure that they had a clear plan. This work was recognised by Ofsted in the latest inspection report. Placement orders (the ability for the local authority to place a child with adopters) had reduced since 2017 but was roughly around 30 since 2018. It was expected for this number to be higher at the end of the 2021/22, roughly 31-32. Warwickshire struggled to place sibling groups so to resolve this, Warwickshire was looking at paying an additional fee to adopters if they have a sibling group because adopting siblings was a financial impact. Warwickshire was preforming better is all areas than the England average apart from children entering care by court authority placement, but this was a courts issue and impacted by Covid-19. Only two children experienced a disruption in 2020/21 which was when children were placed with adopters, and they did not get on. These children experienced permanency since then, but a lot of work was done to learn from these disruptions. Work was also done on ‘family time’ which focused on when birth families located their adopted relatives. Historically, adoptions were closed with possible ‘letterbox contact’ where adopters would write to the birth family on how their children were settling and getting on. ‘Family time’ looked at the appropriateness of children having direct contact with some extended family members; a culture change around children contacting their birth family needed to be investigated as this could provide stability for children. An assessment would be needed to look into this.

The Chair praised the children’s team for obtaining the ‘good’ result from Ofsted.

Councillor Caroline Philips praised the work being done by ACE as children being separated from their birth families could be a traumatic experience.

In response to Councillor Philipps, John Coleman stated that adopting parents were told to be open and honest with their adopted children about them being adopted and some families were really good with keeping birth families informed of their children’s progress and making sure that their children did not lose connections with their birth family. Jemma Fordham added that ACE were aware that contact meetings were not always ‘organic’ so work around this and supporting adoptive families and children was done around contact with birth families e.g. with family group conferencing.

John Coleman concluded that Coventry were planning on basing their adoption service around ACE’s practices.