please sign and share petition and stop unfiar. Removals from single disabled parents and revoke

Actualización de la peticiónEnd Unfair Child Removal from Single Disabled Parents and stop adoptions and Foster ansplease sign and share petition and stop unfiar. Removals from single disabled parents and revoke

Donna WinkQUEEN ELIZABETH House, ENG, Reino Unido

1 nov 2025

Yes, the social care system is in a crisis for placements and adoption, with significant shortages of both foster carers and approved adopters. There is a large and growing number of children waiting for a permanent home, with some figures showing a 45% rise in children waiting for adoption since 2022 and a shortfall of nearly 800 adopter families as of June 2025. The crisis is driven by a lack of available placements, staff shortages in agencies, and a decline in the number of people coming forward to adopt.

Placement and adoption crisis

More children waiting: As of June 2025, there were nearly 3,000 children with a placement order waiting for a family, a 45.5% increase compared to three years prior.

Fewer adopters: The number of approved adopters has fallen dramatically, and there was a shortfall of about 780 adopter families needed for children who are ready for adoption in June 2025. This is almost triple the shortfall from March 2024.

Longer waits: A significant increase in the number of children waiting over a year for a placement order was seen in 2025.

Staffing shortages: Adoption and placement agencies face staffing issues due to low pay, high workloads, and burnout.

Impact of other services: A shortage of funding for therapeutic support and other services means some adopted children are returning to care.

Challenges in the social care system

Shortage of carers: There are significant shortages of foster carers and children's homes, especially for children with complex needs or for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Rising costs: The cost of children's social care is rising, largely due to reliance on expensive residential placements for children who cannot be placed with foster families or in suitable homes.

Underlying issues: The crisis is exacerbated by a lack of support for existing adoptive families and underfunding for services like diagnostic assessments for conditions like Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorde2r (FASD). Yes, there is a social care crisis in 2025, particularly affecting children with complex needs, due to an increase in the number of children requiring care, a shortage of adopters and foster carers, and a lack of adequate support services. This crisis has resulted in longer waiting lists for placements, increased reliance on expensive residential care, and adoption agencies struggling to keep up with demand, notes Community Care.

Children in crisis and placements
Increased demand: There is a growing number of children in the care system, driven by factors including rising exploitation, abuse, and violence, and a greater complexity of needs, particularly from children with trauma or mental health conditions.
Placement shortages: There is a significant shortage of foster carers and adopters, leading to more children being placed in expensive and often unsuitable residential care or being moved long distances from their families and support networks.
Longer waiting times: The number of children waiting for a placement is increasing, with a notable rise in those waiting over a year.

Adoption agencies and support services
Growing adopter shortage: The number of prospective adopters has declined, contributing to a growing gap between the number of children needing adoption and the number of available families.
Strain on families: Many adoptive families are under strain and struggle to get the support they need for issues like educational challenges and aggressive behaviors, notes Community Care.
Inadequate support: Post-adoption support services are often inadequate, with nearly a third of families in crisis only being offered basic information or facing long waits for enhanced services like therapy.

Children with complex needs
Increasing numbers: The number of disabled children with complex and life-limiting conditions has increased dramatically, straining social care services.
Lack of specialized provision: There is a shortage of placement options specifically designed for children with complex needs, who often end up in residential settings far from their home areas.
High costs: The cost of providing care for these children is very high, with local authorities often spending over £6 million per year on individual packages, notes the Institute for Government.
Systemic failure: The lack of support in other services, such as health visitors, children's centers, and mental health services, means that families are pushed into crisis before entering the social care system. Community Care

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Adopter shortage continues to grow leaving more children facing long waits to be placed, figures show

There was a shortfall of 750 adopter families as of March 2025, almost three times as many as a year previously, with a 55% rise in the number of children waiting for over a year with a placement order

By Mithran Samuel on July 30, 2025 in Children, Social work leaders

The word 'adoption' spelt out in coloured letters beneath cut-outs of a family

Photo: zimmytws/Adobe Stock

The shortage of adopters in England has continued to grow leaving more children facing long waits to be placed, official figures have shown.

There was a shortfall of 750 adopter families as of March 2025, an almost threefold increase in a year, according to the latest cut of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Quarterly Data Collection.

Over the same period, the number of children with a placement order (PO) waiting to be placed grew by 13%, with a 55% rise in the number waiting over a year with a PO, reported charity Coram-i, which produces the data for the Department for Education (DfE).

Adoption England, the national body that supports regional adoption agencies (RAAs), said the lack of adopters was a “big concern” and that the number coming forward had been in decline since the Covid pandemic, but added that it was something it was striving to address.

More adoption orders, fewer placement orders

The data showed that 3% more adoption orders – which confer parental responsibility on adoptive parents – were made in 2024-25 (3,070) than 2023-24 (2,980).

At the same time, the number of POs – through which the family court authorises a council to place a child for adoption – fell by 4% from 3,360 in 2023-24 to 3,210 in 2024-25.

However, despite these trends, the number of children with a PO waiting to be placed with adoptive parents increased for the third consecutive year, to 2,910 in March 2025, up 13% on the figure a year earlier (2,580).

Sharp rise in children facing longest waits

There was an even sharper rise in the number of children with POs facing long waits. As of March 2025:

790 children had been waiting to be placed for at least a year since the grant of their PO, up 55% on the March 2024 figure.

390 children had been waiting to be placed for at least 18 months since the grant of their PO, up 63% on the March 2024 number.

Three-quarters of those waiting at least 12 months (590) had “harder to place” characteristics, meaning they were aged over five, had a disability, were part of a sibling group or were from an ethnic minority (other than white minorities).

This proportion was a slight drop on the figure 12 months previously (76%), though the share of children waiting at least 18 months with a POwho had harder to place characteristics increased, from 79% to 82%.

Falls in number of children matched and placed

The increasing waits for children reflect significant falls in the numbers matched or placed with adoptive families in 2024-25.

During the year, 2,740 children were matched, down 8% on 2023-24, while 2,740 were placed, a decrease of 7% on the year before.

This, in turn, reflects a fall in the supply of adopters.

Reduction in supply of adopters

While the numbers of adopters registered (3,240) and approved (2,230) during 2024-25 were broadly static year on year, the number of approved adopter families waiting to be matched (1,510) by the year end was down 16% on the year before.

Coram-i said there were 1,870 children for whom active family finding was taking place, for whom 1,440 adopter families were needed. However, there were just 690 adopter families involved in family finding, leaving a shortfall of 750 as of March 2025.

The equivalent figure for March 2024 was 265.

Sufficiency of adopters ‘is big concern’

In response to the figures, Adoption England’s national adoption strategic lead, Sarah Johal, said: “Sufficiency of adopters is a big concern and remains a key priority for us and adoption agencies.

“The number of people coming forward to adopt has been in decline since the Covid pandemic, and we know that the impact of the ongoing rise in cost of living and other societal factors are contributing to this.”

One of the objectives of Adoption England’s 2024-27 strategy is to ensure that “adopters from diverse communities are recruited, prepared and supported to meet children’s needs”.

Among actions taken during 2024-25 was launching national adopter journey practice standards, which Adoption England said was designed to “standardise the adopter experience, ensuring fairness and quality throughout the process”.

Understanding hesitancy among prospective adopters

Of £8.8m in funding Adoption England has received from the DfE for 2025-26, £1m is for adopter recruitment with a further £1.5m to support matching, with children’s minister Janet Daby highlighting both as key priorities for the organisation.

Johal added: “We have very recently undertaken research to better understand hesitancy, particularly for those who are already considering adoption but haven’t yet taken the step, and will be applying the learning from this.

“We are also doing a lot of work to improve the adopter journey, right from a prospective adopter’s very first contact with an agency, all the way through to a child moving in with adopters.

“We would encourage anyone considering adoption to visit our recruitment website www.youcanadopt.co.uk where they can find lots of helpful information and details of local agencies to talk to.”

adoption, social care statistics

7 Responses to Adopter shortage continues to grow leaving more children facing long waits to be placed, figures show

Emma Evans July 30, 2025 at 1:50 pm #

As an adopter myself, I feel very conflicted with this issue. As on the one hand, I am passionate about how transformative adoption can be for some of the most vulnerable children in society. However, adoption can only be transformative to severely traumatised children, with sufficient, specialist support. This support is required long after the children are placed with adopters and long after the Adoption Order is signed. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, the reason for the huge shortfall in adopters, is largely due to the fact there is barely any support for adoptive families. Even when my family were in crisis, no one would help us. I had to battle the Local Authority and SEND team on and off for years in order to get both of our children a place at a therapeutic, specialist school. The issue is that once the Adoption Order is signed, all help disappears. With the recent cuts to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support fund, I imagine the number of people choosing to adopt will decrease even further. Parenting severely traumatised children is impossible without sufficient, specialist support. Recruiting more adopters without tackling the lack of meaningful post adoption support, is simply setting even more families upto fail.

Rebecca Jaworska August 2, 2025 at 10:51 am #

As an adopter I also feel that the landscape around support will be impacting significantly on the numbers coming forward to adopt. The high levels and complexity of need among adopted children are now better understood and documented. The general failings that are the current landscape in SEN provision, health care, CAMHS etc hit this group hard. The ASGSF provided some security that assessment and support for adopted children and young people would be available to those starting out on their adoption journey. With the significant cuts in funding available this year, (reduction in fair access limit from £5000 to £3000 and no separate funding for assessment,) and a lack of commitment to the continuation of the fund past March 2026, it isn’t suprising that there is hesitancy among those considering adoption. They need reassurance that timely, specialist support will be available. A solution has to be government committing to the ASGSF in the long term and a restoration of previous fair access limits with increases in line with inflation.

LJ Barnes August 4, 2025 at 1:22 pm #

My husband and I have both been forced to step back from work, him into early retirement due to stress-related autoimmune disease, me into reduced hours, just to cope with the relentless challenges of parenting adopted children carrying profound developmental trauma. When we adopted, we were promised therapeutic support through the ASGSF. That fund has since been slashed by 60%, with assessments now completely removed. We were assured robust SEN support; it simply isn’t there. If there’s one devastating lesson from our adoption journey, it’s that we’ve been profoundly misled. Officials have broken promises and shattered our trust; it’s an awful, lonely place to be.

I recently spoke to a couple considering adoption who asked me ‘what it’s really like’. When I explained the painful reality, that we were promised help but have instead faced funding cuts and been left isolated, exhausted and financially strained, they were genuinely shocked. ‘There must be more support than that,’ they said. I laughed bitterly, because we’ve searched everywhere and found nothing. If anything, the government is dismantling that support brick by brick, leaving families like ours to bear the emotional, practical and financial cost alone. Adoption Poverty is a thing that nobody is talking about.

Unless this crisis in post-adoption support is urgently addressed, more families will break, and vulnerable children will pay the heaviest price. Why would anyone come forward to adopt?

P.S. There’s more research being done into the high prevalence of autoimmune diseases in the adoption community and adoption poverty. I wish you’d do articles on this.

Sandra Georgeson August 5, 2025 at 6:53 pm #

As an adoption support agency I am not surprised by this drop in adopters given the uncertainty around the support adopters will receive in the future and the current reduction in the fair access limit. I also hear from families that they have different support from different local authorities, with some being really proactive in offering adopters pathways to support and others being less helpful. In my experience the best packages of support transition the child from foster care to adoption. This allows for the opportunity to assess the child’s therapeutic and attachment needs to put the correct therapy in place prior to adoption. It also allows the adopters to receive informed support from the start instead of waiting for crisis. I’m very lucky with our local authority Barnsley, as they support these transition packages and have seen the benefits for children and their adoptive parents. If more packages were in place from the start it may help attract adopters. The current climate is sadly creating a very unstable environment for adoption, which in turn leaves our most vulnerable children without permanency or a sense of safety.

M Etchels August 9, 2025 at 12:24 pm #

I totally concur with all of the above comments. As adoptive parents we have long felt that more support (not less!) is needed for families such as ours, and that was before, out of the blue, the Government decided in its wisdom to make cuts to the ASGSF, so now we have less support than before. Our children are amazing, but they have suffered trauma and have a number of diagnoses. My husband now has a number of long term health issues directly attributable to stress we have been under for many years. If anyone asks us about adoption, we now warn them of the challenges we’ve faced and the continual fight for support. Prospective adopters need to go into adoption with their eyes wide open, and also to understand there is a chance that one of them may need to give up their job permanently due to their child’s needs. When we heard of the cuts to the ASGSF, along with the shock of realising our son’s therapy would directly be affected (along with a reduction in regular sessions, to date he has not had any therapy since March 2025 due to the Government’s delay in confirming any funding, and now due to the backlog in applications), our next thought was the impact this would have on recruiting future adopters.

James Mutton August 9, 2025 at 3:59 pm #

“..We are also doing a lot of work to improve the adopter journey, right from a prospective adopter’s very first contact with an agency, all the way through to a child moving in with adopters.”

…and then, the strong implication being, you’re on your own forever.

They’d rather talk about anything other than genuine adoption support.

I’m not conflicted about this at all.

Falling adoption numbers are the only thing that will bring about change.

JK August 11, 2025 at 12:51 pm #

Feels like drawbridges are being pulled up for families in England…adoption is much more of an ‘ask’ now, sadly since the 10 years ago when we adopted. Research has taught us so much about the range of issues and support these children come with, and need. We also know more about how to meet those needs for them to flourish, which is great, but we need to push for better structural, societal support for families with needs full stop. To prevent some of the things that stop children needing to be removed, to support them in permanency if they need alternative care, community family support, the SEND/education system, as well as it not being the case that making rent/mortgage payments doesn’t take 2 FT salaries. To find better, more equitable ways to access therapy and to understand that some children placed for adoption will need more and others less – not an annual cap situation, but an understanding that investment in some years/developmental phases reaps more rewards down the line.

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