Influencing & Policy
We put ours members' centuries of experience at the heart of our influencing work, while also providing a robust policy service to members and advocating for adoption policy that best serves children and their families.
Our Work
CVAA has a strong history of developing bold policy ideas, gathering new evidence and building effective relationships with partners and stakeholders to deliver change, despite our small size. To support this, we play an active part in national decision-making forums and working groups, and meet regularly with ministers and senior officials to ensure our policy work has the maximum impact. We will be working closely with the Labour government, guided by the ambitions outlined in our Manifesto for Adoption.
Our policy and influencing work centres around our 3 strategic priorities for 2024-27. These are: ensuring adoptees are supported to develop a lifelong positive sense of identity and belonging, underpinned by ongoing meaningful relationships; supporting VAAs to improve adopter and sector diversity, so that people from a wide range of backgrounds feel confident coming forward to adopt and that all services are rooted in anti-discriminatory practice; and championing the modernisation of adoption across the UK.
Thought leadership
Since 1992, CVAA has set the interagency fee for voluntary adoption agencies, which is the charge for a local authority to place a child with an adopter approved by a VAA. This fee covers the work involved in recruiting, assessing, preparing, approving and matching voluntary agency adopters, and in supporting a child’s start in their adoptive family’s home. CVAA worked with partners ADCS and LGA to establish the fee originally and draft associated guidance, and since then has reviewed and uplifted it when necessary to keep pace with rising costs.
In recent years CVAA has delivered a number of important reports which highlight some of the challenges in the adoption system and include recommendations for change.
In 2022 we commissioned research evidencing the social value of adoption to children, families and society as a whole. The research has been used by government stakeholders, practitioners and judicial representatives to support the importance of adoption as a valued form of permanence.
In 2024 we published ‘My People’, our vision for a new network and hub dedicated to preserving children’s lifelong connections with their birth families and other key people in their lives. My People is a blueprint for brining to life the recommendations made by multiple studies and independent reviews into children’s social care, which have repeatedly called for more attention to promoting children’s lifelong relationships, as well as active partnerships with children and families to design the structures of support around them.
Influencing reviews and reports
In addition to developing new research, CVAA plays a key role in responding to government policy proposals. In December 2023, CVAA responded to the Public Law Working Group consultation on adoption, following extensive consultation with its members. CVAA welcomed many of the recommendations and the overall vision for a more modern adoption system, however warned that without the required level of funding, children and families will not benefit from the changes that are proposed and greatly needed.
Between 2021-2023 CVAA was heavily invested in influencing the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. This included responding to the Review’s Case for Change in August 2021, putting forward our own case for change in September 2021, submitting our top ideas for change, lobbying for recognition of certain key challenges in adoption, and responding to the Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy.
Over many years CVAA has lobbied for changes to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) and responded to consultations on the evolution of the Fund. We have maintained that since its inception, the ASGSF (formerly ASF) has been transformational for children, and its continuation is essential to ensuring children’s permanence and stability in their adoptive families. However it cannot be ignored that there remain barriers and challenges with how funding is accessed by professionals on behalf of families. Feedback from VAAs consistently shows that there is unnecessary duplication and inefficiency at multiple points of the process, and that this is causes significant delay for families who are desperate need of support. CVAA continues to highlight suggestions for simple and cost efficient changes to the Fund to ensure it continues to deliver for children, long into the future.
Cross sector working groups
CVAA has a history of collaboration across the adoption sector and in its 30-year history has represented VAAs on key forums such as the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board (ASGLB), National Adoption Recruitment Steering Group (NARSG), and the UK Social Work Practice Advisory Committee (UKSWPAC).
CVAA members represents the VAA sector in a wide range of national forums in England. Our presence enables us to advocate for our members and lobby for change where families and children are not being well served by the adoption system. CVAA’s CEO is Vice Chair or the National Adoption Recruitment Programme Board (NARPB). VAAs contribute to groups on themes such as Maintaining Significant Relationships for Children, Early Permanence, Matching, Adopter Preparation and Experience, and Diversity.
The CVAA data project
The CVAA data project was established in 2019 to empower agencies with data on their individual agencies and the sector, to support practice improvement, and simultaneously arm CVAA with the evidence to underpin its policy efforts. Every quarter, CVAA collects anonymised data from its members which it analyses to advise on trends and emerging issues. CVAA recently evolved its data project into interactive dashboards for members to engage with, so that agencies can more easily understand their agency’s progress year on year.