I would like to add my support to what has been said about the amendments relating to establishing regional bodies for adoption. Just to give some local examples, in Yorkshire they have already set up a pilot for regional adoption, involving a hub for the whole of the region and then three spokes: one for the north and east of the country, one for the south and one for the west. Each of those hubs includes all the voluntary agencies currently operating in the Yorkshire and Humber region.
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The reports I have had from that pilot is that it is broadly welcomed by everybody concerned, because being in a larger group enables groups of local authorities and groups of providers with a narrow focus—in particular the voluntary groups that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to, which focus on children with specific disabilities or backgrounds who they find hard to find families for—to have a larger look across the region, with better support for them to achieve their objectives. All that has been very positive.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, also pointed to one of the elements of this regionalisation of adoption that is drawn into sharp relief: the additional funding that ought to be made available to support voluntary agencies in particular to find the right matches for the children. All of us want to ensure that children who require new families have them found as rapidly but as appropriately as possible.
In my professional life, I have had one or two very sad local incidents. In one, I was teaching a young boy of 11. He was new to the class, so I asked him his name. “James”, he said. I asked, “What’s your second name?”. He replied, “I don’t have a second name”. Why? It was because his family had unadopted him. As your Lordships can tell, that that has stuck with me for a long time.
What is more important than speed for the children concerned is an appropriate family that will stick with them through thick and thin. The children placed in adoption are often not the easiest children to go into a new family. While I welcome the broad approach that the Bill describes, I hope that we will put more emphasis on finding the right family for the right child than on speed. Mistakes will be made if we put the speed of the adoption process first, as happened in the very sad case I came across.