The Scottish Government Response To 'A Scotland for Children: A Consultation on a Children and Young People Bill'

National Adoption Register

The consultation proposed taking powers to put Scotland's Adoption Register on a statutory footing, to require adoption agencies to provide it with prescribed information in relation to children considered suitable for adoptions and adoptive parents considered suitable to adopt. The intention is to better enable adoption agencies to match adoptive children more quickly with suitable adoptive parents, by establishing a single national register which contained information in relation to all children and adoptive parents that were yet to be matched.

What You Said

56% of respondents agreed with the proposal that adoption agencies should be required to match adoptive children and families through use of Scotland's Adoption Register, 23% disagreed and 21% neither agreed or disagreed. These results should be treated with caution, however, as closer examination of the responses indicated that many considered the question to be ambiguous. Advantages of the proposal highlighted by respondents related to the feeling that it would: a) speed up the adoption process itself; b) be useful in cases of specialist placing (for example on the grounds of the child's ethnicity or special needs); c) ensure a consistent approach to matching; and d) provide another option alongside the current tools for matching. Perceived drawbacks of the proposal included: that the Register might curtail local variation in approaches to securing appropriate placements; and that local authorities should be able to retain the discretion to apply different approaches on a case by case basis.

The Scottish Government Response

The Bill will put Scotland's Adoption Register on a statutory footing and require all adoption agencies to provide it with information in relation to children who ought to be placed for adoption and prospective approved adoptive parents, as prescribed by the Scottish Ministers in regulations. The Bill will also establish as an offence the disclosing of any information derived from the Register otherwise than in accordance with regulations.