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<p>Our national adoption strategy, published last year, sets out our bold vision to
deliver excellent adoption services across England. It sets our commitment to:</p><ul><li>boost
adopter recruitment so that adoptive children are found permanent loving families
quickly;</li><li>improve how children are matched with families through removing unnecessary
barriers and bureaucracy placed in the way of those seeking to adopt;</li><li>continue
to support adoptive families through the Adoption Support Fund; and</li><li>employ
a new full-time national Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) strategic leader and support
staff to drive collaboration between adoption agencies across the country and lead
engagement with other services such as health and education to help children and adopters
get the support they need.</li></ul><p>To support delivery of the strategy, we have
provided additional funding of £48.1 million in the 2021-22 financial year.</p><p>We
continue to discuss adoption numbers with the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership
Board and with the RAA Leaders’ group. These discussions have suggested that reasons
for the decrease include the impact of COVID-19 restrictions in 2020-21, including
on the courts and on wider decision-making processes within local authorities and
RAAs.</p><p>Since the national #YouCanAdopt campaign began, we have seen a continued
increase in the number of approvals of adopters. We now have more adopters (2,140)
than children waiting (2,020).</p><p>Over 1,000 enquiries were received by the 6 adoption
agencies sampled for evaluation purposes. Scaled up, the National Adopter Recruitment
Steering Group estimated 10,000+ enquiries across all agencies in England during the
campaign period.</p><p> </p>
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