Celebrating progress this Adoption Week - but more can be done to care for children

In the past four years, National Adoption Week has seen a 57 per cent increase in the number of children adopted, writes Donna Peach, social work lecturer at the University of Salford.

- Donna Peach, social work lecturer at the University of Salford.

Adoptive parents Giulio and Tracy at A Welcome Home. Photo: PA

This increase in adoption orders is portrayed by the Government to be a testament to their adoption action plan.

To put this in perspective, of the 92,000 children in care across Britain almost 6,000 children were adopted last year.

The Government positioning of adoption as the best outcome for children in care is accompanied by rhetoric which asserts prospective adopters want children to be placed quickly. Thus, reforms continue with further changes in adoption legislation introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014. This far-reaching legislation encourages local authorities to consider placing children with potential adopters before a plan for adoption has been agreed.

The duty placed on social workers to match the ethnicity of a child with their adoptive parents has been removed, with the intention of increasing adoptive opportunities.