New Clause 12
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
1:00 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
I will if the Under-Secretary wants. There is a suspicion—an impression—that needs to be either allayed or dispelled.
Through the use of certain targeted grants, as announced by various Ministers and confirmed in parliamentary questions answered by Ministers, including the hon. Gentleman and the Minister for Local Government, performance reward grants have operated in past years. According to an answer on 3 September last year, the figures for how much grant money each local authority received between 2004-05 and 2006-07 in relation to their performance on adoption targets were released in a table. The figures show that authorities have been incentivised for meeting national adoption targets. The Under-Secretary defined those targets in an answer to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) on 23 July. He said
“A national adoption target was announced in 2000 to increase the number of adoptions of looked after children by 40 per cent. by the year ending March 2005, and to exceed this by achieving, if possible, a 50 per cent. increase by the end of March 2006.”—[Official Report, 23 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 838W.]
Most of us would agree that we need to increase quality adoptions to give damaged children the very best second chance to enjoy the benefits of a stable family life, which might put them back on the straight and narrow, for want of a better phrase. It was particularly envisaged that we would concentrate most on getting children out of the care system who had been there for a long time and ensuring that, if there was no prospect of them going back to their birth parents or kinship family, they would be placed in stable adoptive situations. I think that we all agree with that objective, although there are other countries that take a different approach. The other day I cited Denmark, where in the year before last—the last year for which I have figures—only 20 adoptions took place, but that has much more to do with the flexibility of the system in and out of care, the greater use of residential children’s homes and so on.
I disagreed at the time the 2002 legislation was passed with the use of numerical adoption targets—a very blunt instrument—backed up by financial incentives, which could create a perverse incentive for a local authority that had not met its adoption targets to clamour around desperately at the end of the year to find a few soft targets to boost its adoption figures. Theoretically, that could happen. Although we know that an authority would have to go through all sorts of procedures for the care proceedings and pass the various thresholds, there could be a perverse incentive to try to find some adoption candidates to meet those targets before a year ends.
The fear that something along those lines may be happening is borne out when one looks at the demographics of adoptions that have taken place. I pluck out the example of Hammersmith and Fulham, which has received about £500,000 as a reward for placing more than 100 children for adoption in three years. It exceeded its goal of 101 adoptions and secured 106 by the target deadline. It is interesting to look at what happened after those adoption targets ended—they no longer exist in their old form. The number of babies placed for adoption by that authority fell substantially. In 2005, there were 21, in 2006 there were 23 and in 2007 the figure dropped to 10. The figures are also likely to be low this year. These are not children who have been in the care system for some time, but new babies who are taken from their mothers at an early stage.
I am not trying to undermine the system of fast-track baby adoption that we approved in the 2002 Act. If a mother with or without another parent is incapable of taking on the responsibilities of caring for her baby, there is a case for that child being placed for adoption as soon as possible, subject to the checks, procedures and appeals. I am not just picking on Hammersmith and Fulham; there are many similar cases. If one looks at the overall figure, the number of babies placed for adoption rather than returned to their parents is very high. It increased during the years when the performance targets were operating.
There is a perfectly justified suspicion that the targets are leading to perverse incentives to adopt more children than would normally be adopted, particularly focusing on babies. That does not do anyone any good. I am not trying to suggest that there is systemic abuse of the process, with social workers going around assuming the role of child snatchers, as many in the more sensationalist media would have us believe. Such views have not been beneficial and have not helped the perception and the image of social workers, which we talked about earlier. One way of dispelling that is to say that these targets should not be allowed.
I know that the targets have changed in the last couple of years, but the principle is wrong. The principle can lead to the wrong outcomes and to all sorts of allegations that are harmful to the adoption process and to the work of social workers. The commission on social workers that I chaired concluded that the Government should not use such targets. That is why new clause 12 states the case quite simply. It is a probing new clause, and the Minister will no doubt tell me that it would not fit into this part of the Bill, but it is useful to have this debate none the less. The Government need to state clearly that they will not use these sorts of targets. They must send out a clear message that they will come down heavily on any authority that appears to be over-enthusiastic in its adoptions. We must ensure that we increase adoptions, but we must do so for the right reasons.