British Journal of Social Work: 'Recruiting adoptive families: the costs of family finding and the failure of the inter-agency fee'.

Selwyn, Julie ; Sempik, Joe

The number of adoptions peaked in 2005 but adoptions have since been declining. About a quarter of children with adoption recommendations are never found an adoptive family. One possible factor in the decline is the reluctance of local authorities (LAs) to use adopters approved by voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs). This reluctance seems to be because a higher interagency fee is payable if a child is placed with VAA-approved adopters than if he or she is placed with adopters approved by the LA, and this has led to a perception that VAA adopters are expensive. The fee is intended to reimburse the agency for the expenditure incurred in recruiting, training and preparing the adoptive parents. The aim of this study was to consider whether the inter-agency fee was a good reflection of the expenditure incurred by LAs and VAAs. The adoption team financial accounts of ten LAs and 17 VAAs were examined. It was found that their average expenditure was similar, as were their overhead rates, with both spending between 32,000 [pounds sterling] and 35,000 [pounds sterling] per placement. This expenditure was about 10,000 [pounds sterling] more than the interagency fee. The article concludes that the intra-agency fee is failing to provide full cost recovery to the agency that recruited the adoptive family and failing to encourage inter-agency co-operation. As a result, the VAA sector is in crisis.

41:3, April 2011, pp 415-31