Nearly twice as many children in Telford waiting to be adopted than families willing to have them
Nearly twice as many children in Telford & Wrekin were waiting to be adopted than families willing to adopt them last year, while Shropshire bucked a national trend with more families available than children waiting, the latest figures reveal.
Local Level Data obtained from the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board shows there were 45 youngsters in Telford & Wrekin waiting to be placed with an approved adoptive family, of which there were just 25 as of December 31, 2018.
Across the authoritative border in Shropshire, there were 15 children waiting to be placed with 20 families willing to adopt them.
The numbers are rounded to the nearest five in the data.
The Joint Adoption Service, a partnership in charge of adoption in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin, said it is looking at new ways to encourage more families to come forward.
The figures also show that 25 children in Telford & Wrekin waiting to be placed were under five years old and 40 were classed as 'harder to place', meaning they were either five years old or over, disabled, from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds or part of a sibling group.
More than half of the 'harder to place' children had been waiting 18 months or more to be placed in a home, the data shows.
In Shropshire, five youngsters waiting for a family were under five years old, all of which were part of a sibling group. None had been waiting for 18 months or longer.
On average, children in the area of Telford & Wrekin were waiting 681 days to be placed with an adoptive family despite having a placement order. This compares to the year previous, when the process was taking 533 days.
Children with a placement order were waiting 296 days on average in Shropshire last year, a vast improvement on the year before when it was taking 548 days.
Ian Groom, of the Joint Adoption Service, said: "We are particularly working hard to find new adoptive families for the children we are family finding for, through a range of initiatives such as launching new open events around the region for those thinking of adopting to drop in for a chat with the adoption team, embracing social media to engage the public and inform them of the approval process and need for more adopters, and also utilising data so we can more appropriately project the need for future adopters.
"We are also working closely to dovetail national initiatives recently launched during National Adoption Week."
Across England, there were 4,120 children waiting for a placement order and 2,750 with a placement order but who had not yet found an adoptive family.
At the same time, only 1,700 families were approved to adopt by the end of the year.
