Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2026 [Draft]
I thank Fulton MacGregor for bringing the motion to the chamber and for continuing to highlight the importance of strengthening adoption support for families across Scotland.
The issues that are raised in the motion and in the report “Strengthening the Safety Net: A Framework for Adoption Support in Scotland” are serious, long standing and deserving of the Parliament’s full attention. Unfortunately, we are not at that stage.
Before I speak to the motion, I wish the minister all the best for the future. We may come from differing sides of the separatist debate, but her drive and determination to see more done to support our young people and the care-experienced community is obvious. I welcome her collaborative approach, and it has truly been a pleasure working with her.
My very first debate on this issue when I became an MSP was a members’ business debate on Scotland’s forgotten children, focusing on adoption in Scotland and the urgent need to improve post-adoption support. I spoke about fragmented services, inconsistent access to support for families and a feeling of being left to cope alone once the legal process has concluded. This issue has bookended the session for me, but we are four years on and are still discussing many of the same problems, with little meaningful progress, so I am very glad that there has been some movement with the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill.
As everyone knows, my interest in the issue is both professional and personal. I am the proud mother of two adopted daughters and, through our family experience, I have seen first hand the realities that lie behind the statistics and policy papers. Adoption is not a single event that ends with a court order. It is a lifelong journey. At every milestone—starting school, moving into adolescence and navigating friendships, identity and independence—a new challenge emerges.
As a parent, I have had to repeatedly learn, adapt and advocate to ensure that our daughters receive the understanding and support that they need. That lived experience has given me a profound appreciation for the resilience of adopted children and the pressures that adopted families face. The Adoption UK barometer 2025 highlights that 78 per cent of adopted families in Scotland report facing significant challenges, with 40 per cent describing those challenges as severe, as Fulton MacGregor mentioned. Those are not abstract figures. They represent children struggling with the lasting effects of early trauma and parents doing their best to support them.
The motion rightly highlights that official figures on adoption breakdown are likely to underestimate the true scale of distress due to the inconsistent definitions and the gaps in data collection. Without robust, transparent data, we underestimate the scale of the problem, and families go without the support that they need.
Other areas of concern include the robust transfer of post-adoption support from a specialist adoption team to generic children and families services after three years. In theory, that might seem to be administratively tidy, but in practice it fails to reflect the complexity and longevity of adoptive family life. The impact of trauma does not diminish after an arbitrary timeframe. It re-emerges at every area of transition, all the way into adulthood and beyond.
Although I support the aims of the motion, I cannot ignore the fact that we have been here before. We have had debates, reports and cross-party working groups, yet adoptive families across my region of Mid Scotland and Fife—and in Coatbridge and Chryston, which has been mentioned, and throughout Scotland—continue to report that there are gaps in support.
Further discussion is not needed—decisive action is. The recommendations in the “Strengthening the Safety Net” report talk about having a national adoption practice model, improved training, mandatory data collection, enhanced crisis intervention and a more flexible adoption allowance. Those are not new recommendations—they just need to be implemented.
As an MSP and an adoptive parent, I know how much is at stake. The stability of adoptive placements, the wellbeing of children who have already experienced significant adversity and the confidence of prospective adopters all depend on the strength and support of the system that surrounds them.
This Parliament and the Scottish Government must stop discussing reform and take action now. Adoptive families have waited too long, and they need a system that supports them fully.