Recently I supported National Adoption Week and its campaign for people across Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park to #SupportAdoption.
The week is a national event, focusing on family finding for some of our most vulnerable children in the UK. It is also a chance to demystify and clarify the adoption process, reflect the challenges of adoptive parenting, share individual stories and showcase best practice. Nationwide supporters have been sharing their adoption stories and detailing how their lives have been affected on Facebook and Twitter.
Melissa Forbes-Murison, Manager of Adoption Match, who with her team met me in Parliament, said; “Day in day out, using the Adoption Register for England, we make links for children seeking a permanent loving family with prospective adopters. The Adoption Register is the only statutory register of children and families awaiting adoptive placement. All councils and voluntary agencies are required to use the register. Since 2004 we have found families for 3356 children who may otherwise have never been found a permanent family. The Adoption Register has been used to aid family finding for nearly 20,000 children.
“It was a pleasure for my colleagues and I to share with Paul Scully MP some of the stories of children the Adoption Register has helped find adoptive parents for. I often speak with social workers and respective adopters who are working tirelessly to help find loving homes for children who so desperately need one.”
National Adoption Week should remind all of us of the importance of finding families for some of our most vulnerable children in Sutton. The local council, voluntary adoption agencies and the statutory adoption register supporting them day in, day out, are doing everything possible to find families for children for vulnerable children. Each and every child adopted is not least a saving to the council as they are no longer paying to care for a child in care, but is a life turned around and a better future with their own new family.