How the Birmingham RAA will operate

RAA Responsibilities

Working together with the Trust’s Children in Care teams

The Birmingham RAA model recognises that in order to achieve positive outcomes for children, close collaboration between the RAA and the Trust’s Children in Care teams is essential.

RAA Responsibilities

Child Journey

  • Providing care planning advice and support to Children’s Social Work Teams on quality of practice in assessing children’s needs and early and ambitious identification of children for whom an adoption plan or an early permanence placement might be suitable
  • Obtaining information about children who might be suitable for adoption, including via attendance at legal planning meetings and tracking all children 5 and under
  • Identifying suitable adopters at the earliest stage and identifying where adopters able to meet specific needs may be required, e.g. where a child has ‘harder to place’ characteristics
  • Recruitment of carers for early permanence placements
  • Support to the Trust fostering agency and early permanence placements whilst carers are foster carers
  • Family finding activity and identifying early matching considerations, including for relinquished babies
  • Family finding activity for children and young people requiring long term fostering placements
  • Monitoring of all children before the decision if they should be placed for adoption (known as SHOBPA) is made and once the SHOBPA decision  has been made
  • Preparing profiles of the child
  • Organising the Matching Panel and completing the paperwork for the match
  • Providing information about the adopters for Annex A reports

Adopter Journey

  • Providing placements for the Trust
  • Undertaking adopter recruitment, preparation, training and approval in line with the numbers and needs of children requiring adoption
  • Purchase and sale of inter-agency placements where this offers the most suitable match for any child
  • Family finding for adopters and children referred to the RAA, and matching activity
  • Adoption support needs assessments
  • Organisation and delivery of Adoption Panels to support the consideration of prospective adopters’ suitability to adopt and matches for children with identified adopters
  • Delegated responsibility for ADM decision making on Adopter approval
  • Support and supervision of placements, including early permanence placements
  • Step parent adoption service, including providing screening and information about alternatives to adoption to minimise adoptions and ensure they are appropriate
  • Providing an Inter-country adoption service for potential and prospective adopters, and post order work

Adoption support for families

  • Pre-adoption support assessments and planning at the point that a potential match is identified, and pre-order direct support to adopters and, where it is an RAA placement, the child
  • Post approval support to adoptive families prior to a child being placed or to the Adoption Order
  • Post adoption support assessments and support planning for relevant children and their families
  • Review of adoption support plans for children and their families who are the responsibility of the Trust
  • Provision of a core adoption support offer (Tier 2) as outlined in each child’s support plan and direct provision or commissioning of Tier 3 specialist support as set out in the assessment of need
  • Applications to the Adoption Support Fund

Support for those affected by adoption

  • Birth parent support
  • Letterbox contact exchanges and direct contact between birth families and their adopted children
  • Providing, advice and information about how to access adoption records
  • Counselling and support to adopted adults, including locating the adoption file and record sharing.
  • Payment of delivery fee to external archive supplier
  • Providing information about self-searching, contact registers, leaving information on files, and signposting to other agencies if appropriate