Adopter & Sector Diversity
CVAA’s second strategic priority is supporting VAAs to embed learning and changes so that adopters from a wide range of ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds, with varied lived experiences, feel confident coming forward to adopt and that all services are delivered through an equitable and inter-sectional approach, rooted in anti-discriminatory practice.
The need for change
VAAs have led the way in recruiting adopters from all walks of life and providing a choice to those who may prefer not to work with statutory organisations. This has led to an increased number of adopters from diverse backgrounds and Global Majority communities being approved and matched for many years. Yet racial disparities persist and national data tells us that Black children and adopters continue to wait far longer than their White contemporaries at all stages of the adoption process. The adoption sector needs to do better in finding more prospective adopters who can meet the needs of the children who wait the longest, and diversifying the adoption workforce is a key part of this.
We are:
- Embedding greater understanding, from evidence and data, across all stakeholders about the improvements still required in adoption and offering VAA led solutions to eliminating racial disparities
- Promoting adopter choice by supporting VAAs in recruiting and supporting more diverse, suitable adopters and working with statutory services across the UK, to reduce delays
- Lobbying for improvements in the package of support that adopters from traditionally ‘marginalised’ communities receive throughout the adoption process
- Challenging and supporting the VAA sector to achieve greater diversity and inclusivity across their paid and volunteer workforces.
Recent progress:
- Our data project supports VAAs with national insights on adopter diversity.
- CVAA is proud that its annual data for 2023/24 found that across VAAs there have been significant improvements in timeliness for children from minoritised ethnic groups over the last 3 years, when looking at the time between Placement Order and Match date.
- We also discovered that VAAs have consistently been around twice as likely to have AOs made to people from minoritised ethnic groups, compared with statutory agencies.
- We are pleased that over one in four VAA adoptions (27%) are to LGBT adopters, which is significantly higher than statutory agencies at 17%
- We are working with Dr Tam Cane to ensure her recently published AFDiT framework on supporting children from minoritised ethnic groups is embedded into VAA practice, via our 2024 conference and VAA participation in the AFDiT champion programme.
- VAAs have also come together to establish a working group on supporting Black adopters which intends to harness good practice already happening and build on this, hopefully resulting in future funded pilots.