Paved with Good Intentions: The Pathway to Adoption and the Costs of Delay

The thrust of UK adoption policy is to promote adoption as thebest route to a stable family life for children in the caresystem unable to return to their birth families. However, whatwe know about outcomes for adopted children comes mainly fromstudies that report on children already in placement. This articlereports on the findings of a study that examined the outcomesof a complete sample of 130 older looked after children whohad all been the subject of an adoption best interest decision.Many were successfully placed but, of those who were not, thestudy was able to identify factors that influenced placementoutcome. The negative impact on placement outcomes and the increasedfinancial costs of poor assessment and delays in planning andaction are highlighted in this paper. The reasons why delaysoccurred, the costs of those delays and the impact on childoutcomes lend support to recent government attempts to reducedelay by the introduction of timescales into the adoption process.