The enquiry report says ‘Cuts to family support and social work services were a recurring theme’ .. ‘The pressure on services, particularly given financial cuts and rising demand, left them less time to work with children and families’ …’the impact of austerity, the cuts in family support services and a risk averse climate were considered to be having a very detrimental effect on the ability to effectively support families and prevent children coming into care’ …’In England cuts to the Adoption Support Fund have recently impacted upon those waiting for particular services’. This hardly constitutes evidence as such as all of the above applies to all children facing care not just those with plans for adoption some of which may have flimsy evidence but no means all (e.g. B (A Child) [2013] UKSC 33). Not only do we need evidence as to children returning to care from adoption but we need evidence and research of the circumstances that give rise to adoption plans – this remains largely unknown.

One can correlate the sharp rise in adoptions from 3,100 in 2011 with the cuts to services including chidren’s services preventative services but adoptions have been falling from its peak of 5,360 in 2015 which suggests something else is going on (the Re;BS case). On the question of adoption support families had struggled for many years to get help well before austerity started to kick in. There may be a relationship between cuts in that began sharply from 2011 in CAMHS and the creation of of the Adoption Support Fund (ASF) but this only began as a pilot in 2015. The ASF increased its funding to £19m in 2016 only for the incoming May government to impose a limit of £3000 limit per family late in 2017. It is also a fact that the Pupil Premium was made open to adoptive families in 2013 for all children adopted since 2005. That is not to deny the struggle, access and unequal allocation that has been taking place in regard to the ASF but this is not a partcularly good example.