Aberdeenshire Council encourages people to make a difference ahead of Adoption Week Scotland

Ahead of Adoption Week Scotland (November 14-18), Aberdeenshire Council is highlighting the need to find adoptive families to ensure children get the love and care they need.

Members of Aberdeenshire Council’s Education and Children’s Services Committee (ECS) were recently presented with a report highlighting the adoption service’s work over the last year.

The adoption team aim to enable and support children to remain in their own families, but where this is not possible, the service recruits, prepares and supports adoptive families who can meet the life-long needs of children.

Social Work manager Andrew Dick said: “As well as recruiting, training, assessing and supporting adoptive families for Aberdeenshire children, we also provide other essential services such as post-adoption support to families.

“We are going through challenging times and whilst we saw an increase in people requesting information packs during COVID - perhaps when people were reassessing their own lives and their own their work/life balance - that has now come down in numbers and there has not been the uptake that was hoped for.”

The adoption team encourages potential adopters to keep an open mind and to not reduce opportunities to offer a child a home by being specific, such as gender and narrow age preferences.

Andrew added: “This causes delay for both children and delay for adoptive families when matches cannot be achieved - we are first and foremost a children’s service, providing families for children, as opposed to children for families.”

Over the course of 2021/22, eight adoptive parents were approved. On average, around 14 children each year require adoptive families.

ECS Committee chair Cllr Gillian Owen said: “All children need a loving home and in Aberdeenshire, the team has worked extremely hard to ensure we have people coming forward to enquire about adoption.

“Even during Covid lockdowns, the team were not complacent, ensuring people get attend sessions online and now, once again, in-person.

“Adoption is not a simple process and there is much that prospective families need to consider, but there is nothing more rewarding than offering a safe, loving, permanent home to a child.”

ECS Committee vice chair Cllr Anne Simpson added: “Every child is important and at Aberdeenshire Council we offer a seamless and experienced passage to adoption because for us, just one child waiting for an adoptive family is too many.”

To find out more, visit www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/children-and-families/adoption