Adoption East Midlands is to recruit more social work support officers to deal with the rising numbers of applications for the Adoption Support Fund in the region, following approval at Nottinghamshire County Council’s Children and Young People’s Committee on Monday 13 September 2021.
The Fund, established in 2015, was set up by the government to provide adoptive families therapeutic support during their adoption journey.
The demand from adoptive families for support has been steadily growing and the service commissions specialist support. Applications to the Fund have more than trebled since then, with 583 applications made in the region in 2020-2021, totalling £1.4m
Adoption East Midlands provides a wide range of support to adoptive parents and children including dedicated social workers on hand to offer expert advice, training opportunities and social activities for all the family but where the service is unable to provide the specialist support required, an application to the Fund is made. Therapeutic support can cover a range of services such as cognitive therapy, play and music therapy, and intensive family support.
The growth in applications to the Fund and associated administrative processes and workload involved, are expected to increase as demand continues to rise.
Recruiting two new posts will enable the service to speed up the processing of applications to the Fund and ensure the right support is allocated to adoptive families as quickly as possible.
This will allow the service’s highly-skilled and experienced social workers more time to focus on the vital social work support adoptive parents and children need.
Shelagh Mitchell, Adoption East Midlands’ group manager, said “The Adoption Support Fund is an important service for families.
“The significant rise in applications since it began has led to longer waiting times for applications to be completed.
“Recruiting social work support officers will mean improved processing of applications and, at the same time, free up social workers’ time to focus on providing support for adoptive families. Support is vital to adoptive families and we want those in the region to have the right social work services when they need it, with a focus on early intervention and support.“
Anyone interested in adoption can visit adoptioneastmidlands.org.uk or call 0115 804 4567
