Adoption inspection provides positive outcome
Birmingham Children’s Trust Adoption Agency received a positive outcome from their first adoption inspection, held in February this year.
Birmingham Children’s Trust Adoption Agency received a positive outcome from their first adoption inspection, held in February this year.
Inspectors met with adopters, children, social workers and managers, exploring recruitment, training and support, and tracking cases.
The service was judged to be ‘good’ overall and leadership and management was judged to be ‘outstanding’.
Ofsted described the leadership and management of the service as ‘innovative and inspirational’ with staff who ‘really care about the children they work with’.
Andrew Christie, chair of Birmingham Children’s Trust, said:
“We are delighted with the progress made by the Trust in such a critical part of our service. Our adopters provide a life changing opportunity for some of the city’s most vulnerable children and young people. Our staff are committed to delivering the highest quality support to them before, during and after the process of becoming an adopter.”
Councillor Kate Booth, Cabinet Member for Children’s Wellbeing, said: “We are very pleased with the outcome. Birmingham Children’s Trust is providing a high quality adoption service. The city council places a really high priority on the wellbeing of all our children, particularly the most vulnerable.”
Some of the good areas highlighted by Ofsted in the inspection report, published on 26 March 2019, included:
- Highly skilled staff provide an individualised service across a range of adoption and adoption support services. They are passionate about their work and committed to providing the best service to adopted children and their adopted families.
- The agency uses research to inform and understand the behaviours and responses of children to trauma, loss and attachment. This provides adoptive parents with an enhanced understanding of the impact of early trauma on their children’s behaviour and emotions.
- Staff carefully match children with adopters. As a result, despite the complex issues involved in many placements, there are few adoption breakdowns.
- Staff deliver a range of training to adopters that is appropriate to their needs. This helps adopters to parent children in a therapeutic manner, to understand the complex needs that they may have and to meet children’s needs as they grow and develop.