Adoption

(asked on 3rd July 2015) - View Source
Questioner
Portrait
Greg Mulholland
(Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what funding she has made available to support child adoption; and how much of that funding was allocated in (a) the UK, (b) England, (c) West Yorkshire, (d) Leeds and (e) Leeds North West constituency in each of the last five years.

Answered by
Edward Timpson Portrait
Edward Timpson
This question was answered on 13th July 2015

Local authorities in England fund children’s services, including the adoption process, out of their local government finance settlement from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The Department for Education gave local authorities in England an additional £200 million over 2013-15 to support adoption, including improving adopter recruitment. Allocations of the Adoption Reform Grant (ARG) for local authorities in West Yorkshire are as follows:

LOCAL AUTHORITY

ARG 2013-2014

ARG 2014-15

Bradford

£1,973,269

£626,815

Calderdale

£641,539

£191,581

Kirklees

£1,422,328

£412,544

Leeds

£2,633,222

£649,936

Wakefield

£914,746

£273,078

Total

£7,585,104

£2,153,954

The department has also made available £17 million over 2013-16 to help Voluntary Adoption Agencies recruit and approve more adopters, including those who can meet the needs of harder to place children, and address sector-wide adopter recruitment issues.

In 2015-16, £4.5 million will be given to local authorities to combine their adoption functions by creating regional adoption agencies which will provide access to a wider pool of adopters.

In 2015-17, £30 million will be given to local authorities to cover the cost of commissioning other agencies to find adoptive parents for hard to place children.

Information is only available on funding in England.

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