Further information
Adoption and Children Bill
11:45 am
Moira Gibb (Director of Social Services, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea):
It seems to me absolutely vital that the Bill, when it becomes an Act, is supported with proper resources. The history of adoption legislation is not one that would give us great cause to have that faith. It will be extremely difficult if the expectations of those involved in adoption are raised, only to be dashed because they have received only an assessment and a service is not made available. The fact that they have come forward for an assessment means that they believe that they have a need for help, but obviously, local authorities and their children's services are struggling at the moment, and it will be impossible. Unless the Government make resources available to support the legislation, it seems to me that they will end up fighting very hard against the clear trend of more children being looked after for longer periods and in more costly ways, in terms of the increase in the number of care orders.
What we will be able to provide will depend totally on the resources that are made available. The sense in the field, I have to say, is that the resources that have been announced are not new resources, because we knew about them already. Therefore, people already feel that there is sleight of hand in the approach to this. We feel very strongly that it is really wrong to expect an improvement in the service unless the resources are made available. It is vital that adoption remains part of children's services as a whole and not simply a service on its own. It is clear that we need to improve children's services planning in order to improve adoption services. We cannot steal money out of one bit of social services to resource the adoption service; it will not make sense for children if we keep doing that.