Fewer kids waiting to be adopted in North Yorkshire

But children’s charity Coram has warned the need to recruit new adoptive families is “urgent” as there are now more than twice as many children waiting for new adoptive families as there are approved adopters.

In December 2018, around 10 children in North Yorkshire were waiting to be placed with an adoptive family, compared to 15 one year before, according to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board.

The numbers are rounded to the nearest five.

The figures show that five children had already received a placement order – a court order authorising the local authority to place a child for adoption – but had not yet been placed with a family by the end of the year.

On average, children in the area were still waiting 395 days to be placed with an adoptive family despite having a placement order.

This was longer than one year previously, when the process was taking 201 days.

Dr Carol Homden, chief executive of Coram, said: “There are thousands of children waiting today for new, loving families to come forward. The key message is that we need more adopters from every walk of life to commit to adoption.”

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “To ensure there are enough adopters for those children needing a loving stable home, we have been working closely with Regional Adoption Agencies to focus on finding adopters from a range of communities and backgrounds, especially for those who are sometimes harder to place.”