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The Yorkshire Adoption Consortium developed over 12 years ago and started off as a small enterprise with a "swop-shop" like meeting where 2 or 3 local authorities met to see what families and children they had available to see if they could extend the opportunities of providing families for children who needed an adoptive placements. The initiative was a way of helping to maximise the linking between adopters and children within the region. The benefits for children were an increase in regional placements for children, with easier possibilities for sibling and parental contact. It was also mindful that children placed closer to agencies could be offered support more easily. The consortium has grown over the years and in the decision was taken in 2002 to employ a co-ordinator to manage a database of adopters approved regionally and children available for adoption and to assist social workers in providing possible links to be followed up.
The consortium has gone from strength to strength and aims to promote and raise awareness of adoption in the region and looks to evaluate and improve the way that adoption agencies support children, prospective adopters and adoptive families. We have associate members of After Adoption Yorkshire and the National Adoption Register and British Association of Adoption and Fostering to ensure that we can work in collaboration and partnership with other key agencies to improve the outcomes for children.
The Asian preparation Training is a key development of the consortium. The group offer regular training fro Asian adopters in a range of community languages and provide an opportunity for preparation to be given in culturally sensitive manner and adhering to religious and cultural customs. This allows potential adopters to have meaningful discussions about difficult and sensitive issue in adoption without having to use interpreters or being fearful of being misunderstood. The written material has been translated into Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Farsi. This group has further been developed to a regional post adoption support forum and the group continues to grow with social events and post approval training in the process of development.
In 2006/07 the consortium provided 64 placements for children with adopters within the region who could not be placed within their own local authority. This compares to 24children placed in 2003/04 when the figures started to be collated. There is no doubt that the consortium therefore maximises the opportunities for placements of children with in the region and has grown considerably from the early days 12 years a go.