The Bill requires each local authority to provide an adoption service designed to meet the needs of children who may be adopted, as well as adopted children and adults, and their adoptive and natural parents and former guardians. As now, facilities provided by local authorities as part of their adoption service must include making arrangements for the adoption of children, including assessing prospective adopters and placing children for adoption. Local authorities may provide services by arranging for them to be provided by voluntary adoption agencies or other parties prescribed in regulations. That will enable them to draw on the voluntary sector, which has a huge groundswell of expertise and resource. The White Paper made clear our commitment to promoting greater joint working with the voluntary sector in providing adoption services, and the Bill will ensure that that happens.
Adoption is of course a challenging process.
Adoptive families must be supported at all stages and helped to meet the challenges. It is unacceptable that, at present, provision of adoption support services across the country is patchy and inconsistent. Lack of support can put people off coming forward, when they otherwise would, to adopt looked-after children, some of whom have special needs and challenging backgrounds. As many as one in five adoptive placements break down before the child is legally adopted. That is simply not good enough.