Inter Agency Placement
This page describes how Suffolk Adoption Agency works with other
adoption agencies to place children needing adoption.
Making inter agency placements work for children
This section is primarily for other adoption agencies with whom we
are considering making an inter agency placement.
It is to enable you to find out about us and how we work. In
spite of national guidance, practice still varies quit a bit
between agencies. Planning good placements with loal
colleagues whose practice you know is demanding enough.
Making and sustaining successful placements at a distance is
even more demanding. That is why we want colleagues from
other adoption agencies to know where we are coming from.
Whenever we start discussions with another adoption agency about a
possible inter agency placement we send out some basic information
about Suffolk Adoption Agency, our policies and practice.
We hope this will help us to communicate clearly and improve the
prospect of a successful placement that meets the child's
needs.
Here are the papers we sent out:
| The Suffolk Adoption Guide |
This is our Statement of Purpose. It includes staff
details including contact details, how we plan for placements,
information about our panels and lots more. |
| Guidelines on safeguarding children placed for adoption |
This sets out what we do to safeguard children placed for
adoption. |
| Inter agency placement FAQs |
This paper has answers to lots of detailed questions which have
come up in the past. These include financial support for
adoption, expectations on reviews, policy on references and limits
to parental responsibility for adopters and more. |
| Placement planning meeting format |
We hold this meeting a month before our panel considers a match
involving the prospective adopters, social workers and foster
carer. We share draft reports and make sure that the adopters
know as much as posisble about the child. We also make sure
that everyone feels that it is right to go ahead. |
| Matching report format |
This sets out the child's needs and how the adopters will be
able to meet them. The social worker for the child and the
adopters complete this together. |
| Adoption support plan format |
This sets out how the child, the adopters and birth family
members will be supported. |
Between them, the last three reports cover all the Adoption Agency
Regulations 2005 requirements for the Adoption Placement Report and
the Adoption Placement Plan.
If you are the agency supporting the prospective adopters, we
encourage you to share these papers with your adopters.
Here is our
Inspection
Report (PDF,200KB) by the Commission for Social
Care Inspection from November 2005.
If you have any queries, please contact the adoption social worker
concerned or a member of our adoption management team:
| Elizabeth Pardey |
Social care manager |
Supervises most family finding. |
| Marie Higgins |
Social care manager |
Supervises some family finding and adoption support. |
| John Clifton |
Professional Adviser (Permanence) |
Particularly concerning panels and policies. |
| Vacant |
Head of Adoption |
All of the above. |
East Anglian Adoption Consortium
Network
The Consortium is designed to find adoptive placements for children
from the region who would otherwise have to be placed with a family
well away from where they were born or who would have to wait a
long time in the looked after system before a suitable local
placement could be found.
Children who cannot be placed within the region and adopters
with whom children are not matched by their own agency within a
designated timescale are referred to the Consortium and the
Adoption Register for England and Wales.
Children Placed
- More than two-dozen children are now enjoying life with a new
family thanks to the work of the Consortium. In its first 13 months
of operation the Consortium successfully found homes for 10
children.
- From June 2003 to the end of June 2004, 26 children were placed
through the Consortium. There were seven groups of two siblings,
one group of three siblings and another family of four children and
five individual children.
- The children ranged in age from nine months to nine years old
and two of the youngsters were of dual heritage and were placed
with a family which shared their ethnic identity.
- Member agencies take turns to lead the Consortium for a year at
a time. Sue Foster of Peterborough Council and Melanie Atkins
of Adoption Anglia currently lead
the Consortium.
How the Consortium works
The partner agencies exchange information on children waiting
for adoption who cannot be placed within their own resources –
perhaps a child with a disability, older child or a sibling group –
and on approved adopters who have not yet had a child placed with
them by the agency which approved them as adopters.
The information exchanged is anonymised to protect the identity
of the approved adopters and the children needing a new family.
The
Consortium agreement sets out in detail what information is shared
and with whom. (PDF, 59Kb)
Adopters and children who are old enough must consent to the
information being shared.
Standard
child
profiles (PDF, 25Kb) and
adopter
profiles (PDF, 24Kb) are written for each child and
adopter.
Consortium
managers (PDF, 40Kb) meet quarterly to review how the
Consortium is working and make improvements.
|
An important part of the Consortium's work is to help each agency's
staff to understand better the diverse practices in other
agencies and work towards shared ways of working which will benefit
children and adoptive families.
|
The consortium
managers
The Consortium is a low cost and high value public service. It
employs no staff or resources beyond those of its member agencies.
Each member agency has a
designated
administrator (PDF, 37Kb) who is usually the person already
charged with communicating with the Adoption Register for England
and Wales.
There is a good deal of variation in practice between adoption
agencies. Consortium members are working hard to understand each
other's ways of working, and over time, move towards agreed best
practice. Here is a practice comparison table (available here only
to Suffolk intranet users) setting out current practice in all the
agencies on a variety of issues.
If you want to adopt...