Time for a national adoption agency?

The Times continues its campaign to improve what they consider to be the adoption crisis. Today they have published an article in the paper by Dr Chris Hanvey who is the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health.

Dr Hanvey said the current system is fragmented encouraging individual Local Authorities to hang on to their prospective adopters rather than share their adopters nationally.

He believes that the current system can be changed and that it could be quicker than it currently is. He refers in his article to the current statistics which have shown a decrease in adoptions. He believes that it would be appropriate to set up a national adoption agency answerable to Parliament annually and for there to be a regional network which would allow there to be standardised measures aimed at boosting the number of children adopted. This call for a national agency to run adoption services goes much further than Martin Narey's proposals who is currently the Ministerial Adviser on adoption.