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Numbers of children awaiting adoption placements fall by 40%
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Adoption Leadership Board releases latest statistics on children awaiting adoption
Figures covering
January to March 2015 released by the Adoption Leadership Board (ALB) show that the number of children with placement orders waiting to be placed with adoptive families has
decreased by 40% year on year from
31 March 2014.
At the end of March last year
4,680 children had placement orders and were waiting to be placed with adoptive families. The same time in 2015 shows a significant decrease in this number, with
2,810 children in the position.
There has also been a marked improvement in child timeliness: in
2013-14 the average number of days between entering care and placement with an adoptive family was
594 days, whereas in
2014-15 this figure has dropped to
533 days.
Adopter timeliness, however, has declined. In
Quarter 2 of 2013-14,
50% of approvals made by local authorities were made within 6 months of registration, while in
Quarter 4 of 2014-15 this had decreased to
28% of registrations.
The full set of the ALB’s data reports can be found
here.
