Please provide the following information:
1.The number of adoptive parents on the books of the council since 2010 who have been self-employed (including instances where one partner from a couple has been self-employed)
2. Any policy the council holds on providing financial support to self-employed adopters, in recognition of their inability to access Adoption Leave, including the criteria by which this is assessed.
3. The number of occasions every year since 2015 where the council have provided financial support to adopters on the basis of them being self-employed.
Devon County Council believe compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. We do not hold a centralised record of the figures requested, and so it would require a manual search of every file, going through 100’s of records.
In the interests of providing advice and assistance, we are able to provide you with the following information in regards to question 2: Devon County Council sends out a form which carers have to complete and return with their evidence. We then transfer this information to an excel spreadsheet with prescribed figures taken from the government website for that year and this then gives us the figure.