Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate on the motion in Mark McDonald’s name on adoption and permanent solutions for looked-after children. Scotland’s first-ever national adoption week, which takes place this week, is certainly a cause for celebration. It is a great opportunity for people who are interested in adoption to find out more about the process and perhaps to engage with and speak to those who have adopted about their experiences, and for organisations that are involved in the adoption process to encourage and raise awareness about adoption. I hope that professionals and those who are interested in adoption will make the most of the week and that it will be a success that can be repeated.

I am pleased that we have been able to allocate time to celebrate national adoption week and to engage in broader discussion about adoption and long-term care solutions for children. For children who cannot live with their birth parents, adoption and other long-term care solutions lead to the best possible outcomes for their development. Statistical evidence and real-life stories tell us that adoption can be hugely transformative for the lives of children and their families.

The minister’s acknowledgement of the success of existing measures on adoption during the past decade, including the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 and the introduction of Scotland’s adoption register, is welcome. During the past few years, we have made a lot of progress in encouraging adoption by making it more accessible to all potential adoptive parents, by providing better access to the support that they need to go through the adoption process and by making it easier for authorities to place children with prospective adoptive families.

Despite such welcome progress, we also know that much work is still to be done to improve the situation of Scotland’s looked-after and adopted children. The Government’s acknowledgement that we must consider doing more to speed up decision making and reduce drift and delay in the system is welcome. On the basis of that commitment, Scottish Labour members will support the Scottish Government’s motion, and I am grateful that our amendment has been accepted in the spirit in which it was intended.

When a child can no longer live with their birth parents, it is right that authorities should exhaust every possible avenue to reunite that child with their family before deciding to put the child forward for adoption. However, we must also make sure that children’s rights and needs are always at the centre of decision making, and we would welcome moves to expand the use of the parallel process model that is used in Glasgow to explore more than one option for a child at the same time, to reduce delay in the system.

When I spoke recently to foster and adoptive parents, one parent told me the story of a newborn baby who had been placed in their care at just a few days old and was eventually moved on at the age of three and a half. Such delay in permanence planning for a child is unacceptable and should, for the sake of the child’s wellbeing and development, be prevented from occurring wherever possible.

Certainty and stability are the gold standard, and I welcome the reference in the motion to

“the roll-out of the Permanence and Care Excellence ... programme to all local authority areas”

to ensure that

“children benefit from a secure ... environment at the earliest opportunity.”

Supporting permanent, long-term solutions for children’s care, wherever possible, has the best possible results for children’s long-term wellbeing and development.

However, the evidence and stories from the authorities and the professionals who are involved in the care of looked-after children, as well as the experiences of adoptive families, tell us that adoption is not a magical fix. Adoptive families are an incredible asset to Scotland’s looked-after children and to our society as a whole, but they continue to face challenges after the adoption of a child. National adoption week should be an opportunity for us to give voice to those challenges and to show support for Scotland’s adoptive families and the continuing challenges that they might face.

The reality of adoption in Scotland is not the mythical and old-fashioned image of an unwanted newborn baby being taken in and supposedly rescued by a—usually affluent—couple. Most children are adopted from care, and adoptive families parent some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children, a significant proportion of whom suffer from the long-term effects of developmental trauma that is caused by neglect or abuse.

Research from Adoption UK shows that one in four adoptive families are at risk of breaking down because of a lack of available support. That has led organisations such as Scottish Adoption and Adoption UK to back the fair deal for adoptive families in Scotland campaign, which calls for the expansion of support to every adoptive family who needs it and for priority support to be given to adopted children who need additional support in school and in child and adolescent mental health services.

I hope that the minister and our colleagues across the chamber will support the amendment in my name, which deals with some of those issues and acknowledges the need for changes to be made to the support that is available to adopted children and their families. A child with developmental trauma who is adopted on a Friday does not suddenly on the Monday no longer require the support that they were receiving as a looked-after child. However, in many cases, adoptive families describe hitting a wall when it comes to accessing support; they describe services and authorities being understanding for the first few months or the first year after adoption, but that understanding slowly slips away.

Just this week, I was made aware of the case of a single adoptive parent who lives in Bellshill in Lanarkshire—in the region that I represent—and who was matched for adoption with a child who has a diagnosed learning disability and developmental difficulties. The child was termed hard to place because of their needs, and the adopter had to secure an adoption allowance from the placing local authority, as her circumstances meant that she would need to give up work to meet her child’s needs during the first few years of the placement. Once placed with her, the child began to achieve developmental stages that had been previously thought to be beyond their abilities. That made it clear that the child’s experience of early neglect had been partly to blame for their delayed development.

With the support of the adoption allowance, which enabled the parent to meet the child’s needs, the outcomes were life changing. The parent is now meeting the challenge of getting the right support in place for her child in their school placement. The child has been thriving in the nursery environment and the parent is keen that the transition to primary school does not cause any regression in her child’s development.

Ensuring that the right support for adopted children is in place in schools is vital, and I welcome moves from adoption organisations such as Adoption UK to work with the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland to make all schools attachment aware. Adoptive families can often find education to be one of their biggest challenges. The worst-case scenario of not having the child’s needs met by their teachers can result in them turning to home education as the best solution for their child. The attachment-aware campaign is a welcome action and I hope that more schools and local authorities will get behind it.

There are many examples around Scotland of good practice on support for adoptive families. For instance, schools in East Lothian are taking part in a project through the education attainment fund that focuses on improving the relationship between teachers and children who might have attachment issues—particularly those who are adopted. The project aims to improve communication by using a personal folder for the child to ensure that information is not lost in changes between teachers and support staff. It also aims to introduce to each school attachment ambassadors who can act as a single point of contact and support for the families who require that. We can learn much from those models of good practice and we should strive to ensure that access to such support is comprehensive across the country and is not patchy in certain areas.

The vital role of local authorities in caring for looked-after children and placing children with adoptive families cannot be overestimated. Councils need to be properly resourced to carry out that role, and it is important that we use all the Parliament’s available powers to ensure that social work departments and local authorities across the country have the resources that they need to look after Scotland’s children.

After all, looked-after children are Scotland’s children. It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that children in care have the best life chances, and part of that responsibility is to ensure that our system of placing children with permanent adoptive families is robust and supportive. Adopted children and their families should be able to receive the support that they need to thrive, and I hope that colleagues across the chamber will support that sentiment today.

I move amendment S5M-02624.1, to insert after “delay in the system”:

“; notes the need for continued support services for adoptive families facing challenges; accepts that adopted children should be given the same priority as looked-after children in education and access to mental health services; recognises the transformative benefit of adoption and permanence to children and their families”.