Aims and Objectives

Statement of Purpose

Aims and Objectives

Strategic Aims

Devon’s Children & Young People’s Services directorate was established on 1 April 2006, bringing together the services formerly provided through the children’s division of Social Services and through the Education, Arts & Libraries directorate.

Devon County Council is committed to working towards all children and young people having the same opportunities and quality of life and being helped to attain the highest possible standards of health, development and educational attainment.

The County Council seeks to promote these strategic aims in many ways, some of which are

Keeping children healthy and safe
Supporting the upbringing of children by their families and kin wherever possible
Ensuring good quality, stable homes and support for children who, long term, cannot live within their own families.

Making available the opportunity of adoption for children who will benefit from it contributes to each of these goals.

Aims of the Adoption Service

The adoption service aims to:

function as an integrated component of the children and young people’s services of the County Council, contributing to the fulfilment of the aims of the service as a whole and the achievement of the best outcomes for children.
ensure that the welfare and safety of children are at the centre of the adoption process, and that each child’s needs and wishes are fully considered.
ensure that when a child’s welfare cannot be secured by care within the family of origin, s/he will be provided with the opportunity for stability with a permanent alternative family. Adoption will be the first option considered.
ensure that people who are interested in becoming adoptive parents (including those wishing to adopt a child from overseas) are welcomed without prejudice, responded to promptly and given clear information about recruitment, assessment, approval and support services.
ensure that birth families are treated fairly, openly and with respect throughout the adoption process and have access to adoption support services.

Specific Objectives

To ensure that our child care planning processes provide the opportunity for adoption to be considered for every child who might benefit from it.
To recruit a sufficient pool of prospective adopters to meet the assessed needs of the children needing adoptive families.
To develop a range of adoption support services, including practical, financial and therapeutic services, in partnership with other relevant agencies.
To ensure that the adoption agency employs staff with appropriate skills, knowledge and experience to deliver the aims of the adoption service.
To ensure that applicants for inter-country adoption are provided with an appropriate service from skilled and experienced workers.
To operate within Devon County Council's Equality and Diversity policies.

Principles Applying to Adoption Work

The child’s welfare will be the paramount consideration in all decisions about her/his future.

Children’s wishes and feelings will be taken into account according to their age and understanding.

Children are entitled to be treated with respect; diversity and difference should be valued and celebrated.

The County Council will work in partnership with birth families to ensure that effective plans are made and implemented for their child.

A child’s permanent family will, to the greatest extent possible, be selected for their commitment to providing a supportive lifelong relationship and their suitability to meet all the needs of the child, including those in relation to his or her ethnicity, religion, language, and his or her physical, social and emotional development.

A family which reflects the racial and cultural heritage of the child is usually best placed to meet the whole range of the child’s needs. Every effort will be made to find such a family within a period of time which is reasonable in relation to the child’s age and stage of development. When this cannot be achieved, the child will not be denied an otherwise suitable adoptive placement solely on the grounds that the child and parents are not of the same ethnicity.

Every effort will be made to find adoptive homes where brothers and sisters can live together, unless it is clear that this will not meet their individually assessed needs.

Delay in making or implementing plans for children is sometimes unavoidable but should be accounted for. Every practicable step will be taken to prevent plans from drifting; the reasons for delay will be recorded in each case and the local authority’s performance will be monitored against specified timescales.

Every child is entitled to information about her/his birth family in order to promote her/his sense of identity.

Members of a child’s birth family will be treated fairly and with respect; their relationship with the child will be acknowledged. Birth parents will be given such information about their child’s adoptive family as is compatible with the child’s and the adoptive family’s safety and security.

A child’s birth parents will be kept fully informed about the progress of adoption plans, the legal implications, and their rights. They will be offered access to advice and counselling services from someone independent of the staff responsible for the child’s plan.

Arrangements for ongoing contact, direct or indirect, between the child and birth family will be considered in every case. Plans for contact will be made which are compatible with the child’s long-term welfare and of a kind and frequency that will not undermine the security and stability of the adoptive family.

All adoptive applicants will be treated with openness, fairness and respect throughout the adoption process. No applicant will be discriminated against on grounds of ethnicity, culture, language, sexuality, gender, financial status or marital status.

Adoptive applicants are entitled to know what issues will be taken into account in their assessment. They will be regarded as partners in the assessment process, and will be kept fully informed of their progress, and of any concerns identified in the assessment.

The primary concern of the adoption service is with finding suitable families for children and maximising the indicators of successful outcomes for children. As there is usually a mismatch between the kinds of children needing adoption and the kinds of children applicants are hoping to adopt, home study assessments will be prioritised according to the current needs of children awaiting adoptive homes. Applicants likely to be prioritised are those who appear to have the potential to meet the parenting needs of:

children who are likely to display significant emotional or behavioural difficulties.
children from minority ethnic groups.
children who are significantly developmentally delayed and who may require educational support.
children who have identified health or medical problems and who are likely to need a significant level of ongoing health/medical care.
children who have an identified physical or learning disability.
children whose background histories include having a parent diagnosed as having significant mental health difficulties.
single children aged 5 years or over.
sibling groups of two or more children where the eldest child is aged 4 years or over.

The role of adoptive parents in offering a permanent family to a child is to be valued.

The County Council will work in partnership with other agencies to ensure that as far as possible the needs of all parties to the adoption process are met.

All the parties to the adoption process will have access to the Children & Young People’s Services’ and Devon County Council’s corporate complaints procedures.