Devon County Council

• Management Structure
• Staffing
• Professional Advisers
• Adoption Panels

Management Structure

The senior manager with overall responsibility for the adoption service is the Director of Children & Young People’s Services.

The Director acts as the Adoption Agency Decision Maker and through the Assistant Director for Children, Young People & Families manages the Heads of Service who are responsible for service delivery.  The County recently realigned its management structure from one based on geographical Localities to one based on service functions.  There are Heads of Service responsible for:

• Assessment & Early Intervention
• Safeguarding
• Children with Special Needs
• Early Years and Childcare, and
• Children in Care & Care Leavers.

The Children in Care & Care Leavers service includes teams responsible for the care management of children in care, the adoption team and fostering teams, children’s residential units and associated outreach services, and support to care leavers.  The social workers who recruit and support adoptive families are thus now responsible to the same senior manager as the social workers who place children for adoption.

The strategic management group, the Children and Families Service Senior Management Team (SMT) meets fortnightly chaired by the Interim Assistant Director - Children, Young People and Families. The SMT comprises the Assistant Director and the 5 Heads of Service.

It is anticipated that a new Director of Early Years and Families and an Assistant Director for Integrated Health and Social Care Services will be appointed in the summer of 2008.  The Director will chair a newly constituted SMT, comprising the Assistant Director, the Heads of Service and a Strategic Lead for commissioning.

The adoption service is delivered through

• Local Children in Care teams whose responsibilities include making and implementing plans for children in care and some adoption support functions. These teams are led by Practice Managers who are responsible to Operations Managers reporting to the Head of Service for Children in Care.  The adoption support functions of Children in Care teams include financial support and the management of direct contact arrangements.  The provision of reports in non-agency adoption cases such as step-parent adoptions is undertaken by similarly managed teams within the Assessment & Early Intervention service.  
• An Adoption Unit covering the county through three office bases.  Its responsibilities include the recruitment, preparation, assessment and support of prospective adopters, adoption support services, and the central adoption agency functions of the authority.  The unit is headed by the Operations Manager - Adoption who is responsible to the Head of Service for Children in Care.  Two full time equivalent Practice Manager posts report to the Operations Manager, one specialising in the recruitment, assessment and pre-adoption support of prospective adopters and the other (currently occupied by two half-time staff) responsible for adoption support.  The adoption support functions of the adoption unit include acting as the first point of contact for accessing support after adoption, advice and information, adoption support social workers, educational psychologists attached to the adoption support service, assistance to access appropriate mainstream services including counselling and therapeutic support, the management of letterbox contact arrangements, and post-adoption counselling of adult adopted adults and their relatives – including access to records.

The Independent Reviewing Unit has a responsibility alongside Practice Managers for monitoring the implementation of adoption plans for children and ensuring that timescales are adhered to.

The Operations Manager - Adoption is a member of the Children in Care & Care Leavers Service management group which promotes organisational effectiveness through regular communication, shared responsibility and facilitating the coordination of strategy and working arrangements.  Child care policy documents and procedures and practice guidance are available to all staff in printed form and through the Devon County Council intranet.

Archived adoption and other child care records are kept by Child Care Records Clerks managed through the Business Resources management structure.  Access to and disclosure of information from closed adoption files is regulated by the Operations Manager - Adoption.

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Staffing

The designated Manager of the Adoption Service for the purposes of Regulations 5 to 8 of the Local Authority Adoption Service (England) Regulations 2003 is the Operations Manager - Adoption, Jonathan Hepworth, Adoption Unit, Devon Social Services, Parkers Barn, Parkers Way, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5UF.

Jonathan Hepworth first worked in local authority adoption services in 1980 and has worked for Devon County Council since 1983.  He has been the county’s adoption manager since 1991 and has managed the Adoption Unit since it was set up in 1998.  He has a recognised social work qualification (Certificate of Qualification in Social Work and MA in Social Work (University of Kent, 1981)) and an NVQ Level 5 in Operational Management (2005).

The Practice Manager responsible for the recruitment and pre-adoption work with prospective adopters, Brenda Thomas, has worked as a qualified social worker in childcare and adoption posts for Devon Social Services since 1978.  Prior to that she had worked as a social worker in three other local authorities, in one case as a team leader.  In addition to the CQSW she holds a Cert Ed and an M Phil in Advanced Social Work.

The Practice Managers responsible for adoption support are Jackie Saunders and Katherine Drescher.  Jackie Saunders has a B Phil in Social work (1980) and has worked in a variety of previous posts in Devon’s child care service, including specialist posts with responsibility for adoption work.  Kath Drescher has been a qualified Social Worker since 1989 and has worked in child care social work in London local authorities and an independent fostering agency and in Devon’s fostering service.

The other staff employed in the Adoption Unit are:

Based at Totnes:

• 5 adoption social workers (3.7 whole time equivalent), 1.2 of which time is devoted to the adult post adoption counselling service and 1 to other adoption support functions.
• Letterbox Co-ordinator
  Qualifications: O levels in English & Commerce; RSA 2 (typing); relevant in-service management training.
• 3 support services clerks (2.5 whole time equivalent) Qualifications: minimum RSA Stage 2 typewriting

Based at Exeter:

• 6 adoption social workers (5.5 whole time equivalent), 2 of which are devoted to adoption support functions (one of these is based half the week in Barnstaple).
• 2 support services clerks (1.6 whole time equivalent) Qualifications: minimum RSA Stage 2 typewriting.

Based at Barnstaple

• 2 adoption social workers (1.5 whole time equivalent)
• 1 support services clerk (0.6 whole time equivalent) Qualifications: minimum RSA Stage 2 typewriting.

All the adoption social workers have a recognised social work qualification and most have many years’ experience of local authority child care work including adoption work.  They are all registered with the General Social Care Council as social workers and satisfy the requirements of The Restriction on the Preparation of Adoption Reports Regulations 2005.

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Professional Advisers

Specialist advisers to the adoption service include:

• Legal adviser – the Assistant County Solicitor and his staff
• Medical Advisers – there are three medical advisers to the adoption service who each have specialist paediatric knowledge.  Two of these sit as members of the two Adoption Panels.  They all carry out medical and developmental assessments of children and review medical reports on prospective adopters so that written advice is available to the authority on every case.
• Education Adviser – a senior Educational Psychologist with a specialist brief to provide advice and support to the adoption service.

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Adoption Panels

Devon County Council has two Adoption Panels constituted in accordance with the Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005.

The Adoption Panels have three main functions:

• Recommending whether a child should be placed for adoption;
• Recommending whether prospective adoptive parents are suitable;
• Recommending the ‘match’ of a child with particular prospective adopters.

The membership of the Adoption Panels is:

North & East Devon Adoption Panel

Chair – independent – an adopted person

• Member of the County Council’s Executive or a Scrutiny Committee with Children’s Services responsibilities
• 2 qualified social workers employed by the County Council (one being a manager with considerable experience of managing children’s services and policy work, the other an experienced child care practitioner and first line manager).
• Medical Adviser
• 3 independent people (including two adopted people and an adoptive parent)
• 2 additional people (including an adoptive parent who has also been a foster carer, and the Education Adviser)

South & West Devon Adoption Panel

Chair – independent – director of a voluntary adoption agency

• Member of the County Council’s Executive or a Scrutiny Committee with Children’s Services responsibilities
• 2 qualified social workers employed by the County Council (one being a manager with extensive experience of managing children’s services, the other an experienced child care social work practitioner).
• Medical Adviser
• 3 independent people (two adopted people and an adoptive parent).
• 2 additional people (both adoptive parents).

In addition, each panel has access to the services of:

• A ‘professional adviser’ (the Operations Manager - Adoption) who attends all meetings and liaises between the Adoption Panels and the Agency Decision Maker.
• A legal adviser (Assistant County Solicitor).  He, or a solicitor from his staff, attends meetings of the Adoption Panels when a need for legal advice is anticipated (such as when children’s plans are first considered by the panel) and at other times is available for consultation if required by the panel.
• ·The educational adviser to the adoption service sits as a member of the North & East Devon Adoption Panel.  She and two colleagues are able to advise and assist as necessary on all adoption cases.

Devon is a member of the South West Adoption Consortium, a collaboration between 14 local authorities and 3 voluntary adoption agencies.  The Consortium is administered by Somerset County Council and works under the direction of the regional Heads of Children’s Services Group.  The functions of the Consortium are to increase the range of possible placements which can be considered for individual children and prospective adopters, and to promote (and where necessary co-ordinate) the consistent application of good practice.  The Operations Manager, Adoption is the County Council’s link person with the Consortium.