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Further information: Telephone: 0330 222 7777

www.westsussex.gov.uk/adoption

Effective children looked after (CLA) permanency planning 

Our focus is on providing children in care with a permanent and stable environment. The West Sussex adoption team is dedicated to placing children with adoption care plans in the right families as soon as possible. This measures the average time between a child entering care and moving in with their adoptive family.

March 2021 performance

This number has remained stable which is again to be seen as a positive in the context of many extended sets of court proceedings where families have been putting forward additional family members to be assessed at late stages. A new initial viability screening tool has now been agreed to ensure there is no delay and that we do not have to fully assess family members that are highly unlikely to be able to offer permanence.
However, timescales remain high due to Adoption Orders granted for children who have specific needs (age, complex needs, disability) and/ or challenges within the adoptive family such as adopter separation pre order, child placed following disruption.

Action

New process for joint working between West Sussex and Adoption South East (ASE) have been agreed in terms of timescales around the matching process to ensure there is no delay once orders are made (including an escalation process) and ASE are putting on additional matching panels as necessary
West Sussex are part of a Regional Adoption Agency - Adoption South East which is developing a matching process to ensure more timely matches for children with adoption care plans.
Children Looked After and Adoption Teams are working more closely together in ensuring decisions regarding sibling placements are made in a timely way and that adoption plans are kept under closer scrutiny to improve performance in this measure.
We are working closely with our Adoption South East partners to ensure that we consider adopters from within the region when there is no West Sussex adoptive family available for a child.
We are developing the Adoption website to attract more interest to West Sussex as an adoption agency.