Post-adoption support

A recent report from the House of Lords Committee on Adoption Legislation has said that adoptive parents should receive more support to help them care for vulnerable children.

Children adopted from care have often experienced neglect and abuse and therefore may have a range of complex needs. Local authorities and other service providers should be placed under a legal obligation to provide post-adoption support to children and adopters.

The Committee warned that the Government's focus on driving up the number of adoptions should not be delivered at the expense of other routes to permanence, such as special guardianship or kinship care, for children for whom adoption may not be suitable.

Efforts to address the problems of birth parents in order to enable families to stay together should not be undermined by the desire to increase the number of adoptions. The Committee is also concerned that there is a significant lack of information about rates of adoption breakdown.

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