Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase the number of parents willing to adopt children and young people.

Over £2.5 million of government funding has been invested in adopter recruitment, with further committed funding of £1 million between 2023 - 2025.

The department has worked closely with the Regional Adoption Agencies since 2019 to test new and innovative ways for adopter recruitment. This saw the launch of the #YouCanAdopt campaign in 2020. As a result, the number of approved adopters waiting to be matched with a child rose from 1,900 at 31 March 2019 to 2,620 at 31 March 2022.

The department’s National Adoption Strategy sets out our aims and ambitions to build on this best practice and drive consistent, high-quality standards across the whole of the adoption process, including adopter recruitment. In March 2022, the department announced an investment of £160 million over three years to deliver the strategy.

More detailed information about our plans for recruitment in the Strategy can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1006232/_Adoption_strategy_.pdf.