Adoption Matters

Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 1 Adoption Matters Adoption Matters 14 Liverpool Road, Chester CH2 1AE Inspected under the social care common inspection framework

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Information about this voluntary adoption agency

This is an independent voluntary adoption agency and a registered children’s charity. The agency operates across the North of England, Stoke, Staffordshire and Shropshire, with offices in Durham, Leeds, Blackburn, Hale, Warrington, and Chester.

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Information about this voluntary adoption agency

The agency offers adoption services which include recruitment, assessment, and preparation of prospective adopters, ongoing support to adoptive families, and intermediary work with adopted adults.

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Information about this voluntary adoption agency

The agency currently supports 106 prospective and approved adoptive families, with 53 children currently placed for adoption.

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Information about this voluntary adoption agency

The current manager has managed the whole of the service since June 2025 but was previously a head of service since 2018 so is very familiar with the service. The responsible individual has been in post since January 2022.

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good

How well children, young people and adults are helped and protected good

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good

The effectiveness of leaders and managers good

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good

The voluntary adoption agency provides effective services that meet the requirements for good.

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good

Date of previous inspection: 9 January 2023

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good

Overall judgement at last inspection: outstanding

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good

Enforcement action since last inspection: none Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 2

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

The agency has a clear and well-established enquiry process. Most adopters find that this provides a warm and timely response to those considering adoption. All enquiries are followed up and closely tracked. Information events are regular, accessible and informative.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Prospective adopters benefit from thorough and robust assessments that focus on the challenges and strengths individual to each family. Social work analysis is well considered and evaluative. The agency takes a considered and cautious approach to the assessment and approval of adopters who have experienced traumatic events in their lives. Decisions to progress or pause assessments are well informed and are made in conjunction with other professionals. The agency is able to have difficult conversations with prospective adopters to ensure that decisions made about assessment and suitability are in the best interests of children.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Children who already live in the family benefit from direct work to gain their views and support their understanding of what adopting a sibling might be like for them. Staff completing this work are child-focussed and adapt their communication based on the age and understanding of the child they are working with.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

High quality preparation training supports prospective adopters to fully understand the varied needs of children who need adoptive families. This training also offers prospective adopters the opportunity to learn more about early permanence and adopting siblings. Key areas are covered in the training including child and brain development, attachment and loss. This helps adopters to understand the impact of children’s early experiences and how best to support children.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

The agency promotes early permanence for children, including for children over the age of 2 years and sibling groups. This approach enables more children to move to their adoptive families at the earliest possible time.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Adopters welcome creative methods of identifying the right children for their family. One adopter said, ‘We are thankful to Adoption Matters in pursuing creative ways of connecting future families, as without their social media initiative, we may not have found our children!’

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

When identifying whether adopters can meet a child’s needs, social workers seek to understand the child’s experiences and support families to understand the uncertainty of children’s future needs. When children join their adoptive families, social workers keep children at the heart of their decisions. Adopters value the support they receive from their social workers.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Adopters are responsive to their children’s individual needs because they understand their early life experiences. Social workers speak to prospective adopters throughout Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 3 the assessment about the importance of the child’s birth family identity and encourage some level of contact with the child’s birth family.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Adopters benefit from access to ongoing support groups, with consideration given to communities within the wider adopter community, such as multi-cultural support groups and single adopter support groups. This provides adopters with informal peer support, as well as ongoing access to experienced social workers. Adopters benefit from regular newsletters informing them of events, support groups and resources. The neuro diversity working group has raised awareness within the agency of neurodiversity and how to better support adoptive families and staff who are neurodiverse.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

The post adoption support offer is strong. A series of annual therapeutic consultations offered to families helps to maintain stability and is used to bridge gaps in funding for commissioned services. The multi-disciplinary therapeutic team are creative and inclusive and have developed sessions, webinars and activities based on identified areas of need. Activities such as forest school, choirs and horse riding have been well received by children and families. The agency also offers a wide range of free resources and webinars to further support adopters.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

The quality of adoption support is a significant strength of the agency. Highly trained professionals offer high quality services to families. Staff have a flexible and dynamic approach to working with children and families, which ensures that their work has a meaningful impact. Professionals comment positively about the flexibility of the service, the relationships therapeutic workers build with children and the focus of the service on the needs of children and families. One child said of their therapeutic life story worker, ‘She’s amazing’. The agency continues to develop this area of service to further enhance their therapeutic offer. Although commissioned services are reliant on the adoption support fund, there have been active attempts to secure alternative funding streams, some of which have been successful.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

The agency is swift in responding to the initial requests of tracing birth family. Adults who were adopted are sensitively prepared before information is passed on. One adopted adult spoke about the support they received ‘exceeding their expectations’ in terms of the support that has been provided.

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Overall experiences and progress of service users: good

Children’s files do not include all the documents that should be kept. This is a missed opportunity to ensure that children who return to the agency seeking to understand their adoption journey have access to all key information.

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good

The majority of prospective adopters develop a good understanding, through the preparation, training and support provided to them, of safe care principles and how children’s past experiences impact upon their development. However, a small number of children have experienced breakdowns after moving to their adoptive families. For some children, this has been due to the agency’s willingness to match Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 4 adopters with children who have more complex needs. When children move to their new family, adopters benefit from the input of the therapeutic team to equip them with strategies to support children’s vulnerabilities.

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good

Panel oversight and scrutiny is robust and focussed on issues relevant to each individual family. Panel benefits from members with varied knowledge and experience, many of whom have adopted themselves. Prospective adopters feel welcomed and well prepared when they attend panel. When required, additional information is requested to ensure that assessments are thorough and that applications are fully considered before decisions are made.

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good

The agency decision maker is experienced with a vast understanding of the sector. Agency decisions take into account the recommendations made by the panel and are completed in a timely way. However, records do not indicate the rationale for the decision made by the agency decision-maker.

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good

When safeguarding concerns arise, the agency has appropriately and effectively managed concerns and referred relevant information to other professionals and agencies. Staff receive safeguarding training specific to adoption and the needs of adoptive families. This ensures that staff maintain their safeguarding knowledge.

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good

When disruptions occur there is effective learning to inform further practice and service development. Similarly, the agency demonstrates a keen desire to learn from serious case reviews. However, learning is not followed by clear action plans or implementation of learning actions. This has led to inconsistent implementation of key learning points, such as unannounced visits only being completed for some families and no clear process in place to minimise vulnerabilities when older or more complex children move to adoptive families.

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good

The staff team is largely stable, filled with long-standing social workers who bring a wealth of adoption knowledge to the agency. There has not been a need for many new staff to be recruited. However, when this has happened, safer recruitment processes have not been consistently followed. For some new staff, references have not been received to cover current or immediately previous roles and references that have been received have been from colleagues instead of managers. Employment gaps have also not been fully explored with no verification sought to confirm the new staff’s stated activities during those gaps. Additionally, when volunteer panel members are recruited, checks are not completed to ensure that they hold the qualifications stated.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The agency has had a challenging time in recent years, with financial pressures, challenges in the sector and changes in leadership and management. This has impacted on staff morale. However, on the whole, staff speak positively about the support they receive. In recent months, communication from senior leaders has improved which has eased some of the anxieties of the staff team. Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 5 A new chair of the board of trustees has been appointed, who has lived experience of adoption. He is described as ‘hands on’ and has met staff and delivered training to them. This is helping staff to feel more connected to the senior leadership team.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Most staff feel well supported by their managers and team. Staff benefit from regular supervisions which enables them to discuss their own wellbeing as well as challenges in their work. Team meetings are also held regularly. Senior managers are making more attempts to bring different locality teams together to improve the feeling of connectedness across all staff teams. Practice forums take place monthly. These provide staff with the opportunity to reflect on practice issues and case dilemmas and support shared learning while promoting staff well-being.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

Staff feedback about opportunities for development is mixed. Opportunities are dependent on which service and locality staff work in, as well as whether staff identify development opportunities themselves. While staff have access to training, clear development opportunities are not provided from senior leaders.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

New staff do not receive a comprehensive induction or support package to ensure that they understand how to provide the quality service aspired for. New staff have been expected to complete adoption assessments and reports with little input or oversight from management and without shadowing in full or co-completing these first.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The agency benefits from a marketing manager who is creative in finding new ways to recruit adoptive families for children. The agency has recently identified charity ambassadors to promote the charity’s mission, to secure resources and raise funds. The agency works in collaboration with other agencies and complete targeted campaigns to promote awareness of adoption and the services they offer.

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The effectiveness of leaders and managers: good

The Agency has positive working relationships with regional adoption agencies and other voluntary adoption agencies. Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 6

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Statutory requirements

This section sets out the actions that the registered person must take to meet the Care Standards Act 2000, The Voluntary Adoption Agencies and The Adoption Agencies (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2003, The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 or any other relevant legislation, and the national minimum standards. The registered person must comply within the given timescales.

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Requirement Due date

The registered provider, the manager and, in relation to any branch, the branch manager, shall not—

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Requirement Due date

employ a person to work for the purposes of the agency unless that person is fit to work for the purposes of an agency.

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Requirement Due date

For the purposes of paragraph (1), a person is not fit to work for the purposes of an agency unless—

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Requirement Due date

full and satisfactory information is available in relation to him in respect of each of the matters specified in Schedule 2. (Regulation 14 (1)(a) (3)(d))

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Requirement Due date

Specifically, the registered person must ensure that full and satisfactory references are received from current and/or previous employers, where those employers are relevant to the role applied for. References should be provided by managers or HR teams and should be received from a registered work address. References should be cross referenced with applications to ensure that dates of employment match. The registered person must ensure that qualifications are provided when relevant, including for voluntary roles. 06 December

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Recommendations

 The registered person should ensure that there is a good quality learning and development programme which includes induction, post-qualifying and in-service training, that staff and volunteers are supported to undertake. New social workers should be supported to develop hands-on experience in completing adoption Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 7 assessments before completing an assessment on their own. (‘Adoption: national minimum standards’, page 66, 23.1)  The registered person should ensure that staff, volunteers and persons on the central list understand and follow the agency’s policy for the keeping and retention of files, managing confidential information and access to files (including files removed from the premises). There is a system in place to monitor the quality and adequacy of record keeping and take action when needed. Key documents for children, including life story documents and all matching

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Recommendations

documents, should be kept on file to enable children to fully understand their journey to their adoptive family. (‘Adoption: national minimum standards’, page 78, 27.2)  The registered person should ensure that the manager regularly monitors all records kept by the agency to ensure compliance with the agency’s policies, to identify any concerns about specific incidents and to identify patterns and trends. Immediate action is taken to address any issues raised by this monitoring. When learning is identified, a clear action plan should follow which ensures that actions identified are consistently implemented. (‘Adoption: national minimum standards’, page 73, 25.2)  The registered person should ensure that the decision-maker makes and records a considered decision that takes account of all the information available to them, including the recommendation of the adoption panel. While rationale from panel

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Recommendations

does not need to be duplicated, the record of the agency decision should include the decision-makers own rationale about the applicant’s suitability to adopt. (‘Adoption: national minimum standards’, page 50, 17.10)

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Information about this inspection

Inspectors have looked closely at the experiences and progress of children and young people, using the social care common inspection framework. This inspection was carried out under the Care Standards Act 2000 to assess the effectiveness of the service, how it meets the core functions of the service as set out in legislation, and to consider how well it complies with The Voluntary Adoption Agencies and The Adoption Agencies (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2003, The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005, any other relevant legislation, and the national minimum standards. Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 8

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Voluntary adoption agency details

Registered provider address: Adoption Matters, 14 Liverpool Road, Chester CH2 1AE

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Voluntary adoption agency details

Email address: Jacqui.Shore@adoptionmatters.org

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Inspectors

Aislinn Cooper, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Carrie Mayes, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Suzanne Birchall, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Evelyn Chafota, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Shirin Khan, Social Care Regulatory Inspector Inspection report for voluntary adoption agency - Adoption Matters 9 to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children’s social care and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, further education and skills, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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Inspectors

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