Scotland S Adoption Register

SCOTLAND’S ADOPTION REGISTER 4TH QUARTER UPDATE REPORT 2015/ 2016 1 January 2016 to 31 March 2016

INTRODUCTION

This report provides a summary of the activity of Scotland’s Adoption Register for the fourth quarter of 2015/16. In addition to maintaining the national linking service, the key activities were:  Adoption Exchange Day – held on 29 February in Dundee  Planning for second pilot Adoption Activity Day – to be held in May  Preparation for implementation of new regulations  Establishment of new portal for sharing information with agencies  Development of proposals for on line access to the Register

NATIONAL LINKING SERVICE – STATISTICAL SUMMARY Total matches since Register established At 31 March 2016 268

Children and Families on Register Previous Quarters At 31 March 2016 Total at Total at Total at Seeking Pursuing a On Hold Total at 30/6/15 30/9/15 31/12/15 placement link 31/03/16 Children 188 152 152 86 11 8 105 Families 108 110 105 58 24 14 96

Referrals and Matches: by quarter 2015/16

1st 2nd 3rd 4th Quarter Quarter Quarter Quarter Jan 2016 Feb 2016 Mar 2016 4th Quarter total total total Total Children referred 66 47 22 13 8 15 36 Families referred 25 32 36 14 7 9 30 Matches: Linking service 9 30 12 1 3 2 6 Exchange days 5 9 4 2 3 4 9 Activity days 0 0 3 1 0 1 2 SCW 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total matches 14 39 19 4 6 7 17 Referrals and Matches – Trends 2014/ 2015 2015/ 2016 Q 1 Q2 Q 3 Q 4 Total Q 1 Q 2 Q3 Q4 Total 15/16 14/15 Children referred 31 73 42 59 205 66 47 22 36 171 Families referred 20 32 28 30 110 25 32 36 30 123 Matches: Linking service 4 17 10 23 54 9 30 12 6 57 Exchange days 2 2 2 17 23 5 9 4 9 27 Activity days 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 5 SCW 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 Total matches 7 19 12 40 78 14 39 19 17 89

1 Referrals and Matches by Quarter 2012-2016

Analysis of trends:  The marked fall in the number of children on the Register results from a combination of lower referrals in the latter part of the year and a slight increase in the number of matches.  The drop in the number of children referred appears to be more than just part of the usual statistical fluctuation. It is hard to know, however, whether this is because agencies are being more successful in finding placements quickly without needing recourse to the Register, or whether it reflects a shift in child care planning and a reduction in the number of adoption plans being made for children – possibly mirroring the changes that have been seen in England over the last 2 years. The register will continue to monitor and report on this trend.  Despite the drop in referrals, the number of matches made by the Register continued to rise – 89 matches in the year being the highest total achieved to date.  The figures (below) giving reasons for children being removed from the Register are broadly in line with previous trends – although a high number of non-register matches was recorded at the beginning of the year. This may reflect the use of more robust processes at the Register for checking on the circumstances of children and families referred, so that they do not remain listed on the Register when their circumstance have in fact changed.

Impact of new regulations on statistical returns The new regulations will mean a higher proportion of children with an adoption plan will be referred to the Register. Although this will still not cover all such children, the increase will make the Register’s statistical returns a more reliable indicator of the national picture than they are at present. Because the regulations are not retrospective, any impact will not begin to be apparent until the second quarter of 2016/17.

Reasons children removed from the Register: 2014 - 2016 by quarter 2014/ 2015 2015/ 2016 Reason for removal Q 1 Q 2 Q 3 Q 4 Total Q 1 Q 2 Q3 Q4 Total 14/15 15/16 Withdrawn 32 11 6 3 52 18 2 3 3 26 Child plan changed to fostering 14 11 4 4 33 16 2 14 3 35 Child matched non register 8 5 2 22 37 37 7 14 8 66

Participation by Local Authorities and Voluntary Agencies 14 of the 32 Local Authorities referred children during the fourth quarter. A further 13 continue to have children on the register. 12 Local Authorities and only 2 of the Voluntary Adoption Agencies referred families. In total, 28 Local Authorities made active use of the register in this period.

Adopters referred 4th quarter: demographics Total Adopters referred: 30 (30 households/ 54 individuals)

Ethnicity Gender Household Age Current Status composition White: 49 Female : 30 Female: 6 21-30: 0 Seeking Placement: 26 Other 5 Male: 24 Male/Female: 22 31-40: 19 Pursuing link 3 Female/Female: 0 41-50: 28 On Hold 0 Male/Male: 2 51+: 7 Matched 1 Of the 3 families ‘pursuing a link’ –all are pursuing based on register links.

Children referred 4th quarter: demographics Total children referred: 36

2 Ethnicity Gender Individual/Groups Age at Current Status referral White: 36 Female : 15 Individual Children: 25 0-2: 11 Seeking Placement 31 Asian: 0 Male: 21 Sib Groups of 2: 4 2-4: 9 Matched 2 ( 8 children) Sib Groups of three: 1 4-6: 7 Pursuing link 3 ( 3 children) 6+: 9 Withdrawn 0 On hold 0 The 3 children ‘pursuing a link’ are all are all doing so based on register links.

ADOPTION ACTIVITY DAY PILOT

The first event as part of the Scottish Adoption Activity Day pilot was run on 3rd October 2015 in Prestwick Academy. Detailed information about that event was included in the third quarter report. The outcomes of the day in terms of matches achieved have now become clearer and are summarised in the table below. Six children have been matched with adopters they met on the day. The workers from one of the participating agencies shared information about a seventh child with an adoptive couple who were not present, and a match has subsequently emerged from that link. Outcome for the 19 children who attended Number Percentage No expression of interest 5 26% Expression of interest considered but not being pursued 7* 37% Matched or very likely to proceed to match 7 37% Total 19 100%

The independent report by Dr Chris Robinson, commissioned by the Scottish Government, will be published by the government after the period of pre-election purdah ends on 5 May. Broadly this was a positive report that supports the argument that Adoption Activity Days should be one of the approaches we use for finding matches for children.

Plans are underway to run two further pilot Activity Days in 2016. The second will take place in Perth on Saturday 14th May and has been organised in conjunction with a group of local authorities from the North East. The 3rd event is likely to be in the South East in October. Once the three pilot events have been completed, and if the evidence continues to support the view that these should become part of the way that SAR works, a proposal will be developed about how they should be run in future. ADOPTION EXCHANGE DAYS

There was one Adoption Exchange days during the fourth quarter, on 29th February, in the Caird Hall Dundee. 10 local authorities and 4 Voluntary organisations attended along with 27 adopters (i.e. adopter households).

It is useful to compare outcomes from the different family finding approaches to consider which are most effective. Although there are difficulties in finding statistical measures for Exchange Days that provide a meaningful comparison, the key statistics from the 4 Exchange Days held between April and December 2015 were:  Number of children featured: 187 (some of whom were featured more than once)  Number of matches: 20  Matching percentage from all 4 events: 10.7%  Average matching percentage from individual events: 7.3%

SCOTTISH CHILDREN WAITING There has been no edition of Scottish Children this quarter. The winter edition was published on 16/12/2015 and the first edition in 2016 is to be published during the week beginning 11/4/16

CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE (SC) ACT 2014 – SCOTLAND’S ADOPTION REGISTER REGUALTIONS 2016 As well as reminding agencies about the basic requirements of the regulations and the need for tracking systems to be in place in order to adhere to the timescales, the Register introduced new referral forms to coincide with the introduction of the new regulations on 1 April 2016. By completing the new forms agencies can be confident that they will be meeting their statutory obligations – without having to amend and adapt their own systems.

As the new regulations are not retrospective, there will be no immediate impact on the numbers of children on the Register. This should begin to become apparent in the 2nd quarter of 2016/17 once the requirement to refer children and adopters within 3 months of the relevant decision begins to be applicable.

ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW PORTAL The new IT portal required to establish an independent IT infrastructure for the Register, not reliant on servers operated by Coram/BAAF, is now well established. The portal was created within Office 365 providing higher levels of security than that offered by the previous version. It requires agencies to create their own portal accounts and a significant amount of support was provided to agencies to manage the transition. The development of the new portal provided a good opportunity to change the SAR ‘domain name’ to use the ‘.scot’ domain promoted by the Scottish government. The shift to a new email address [email protected] - has been relatively painless.

ADOPTION REGISTER WEBSITE The website for Scotland’s Adoption Register was launched on 8/3/15. In this quarter the site received 3,782 ‘hits’ by 3,044 unique users (comparing to 4,491 and 3,557 in the previous quarter).

Robin Duncan Scotland’s Adoption Register Manager 30/4/16