A STUDY showing that looked after children in Scotland can wait years to be adopted was presented at a conference in Stirling this week.

The findings in the University of Stirling-led work, titled Permanently Progressing? Building Secure Futures for Children in Scotland, were shown off at the Stirling Court Hotel on Wednesday, September 19.

Researchers, including partners from York and Lancaster in collaboration with the Adoption and Fostering Alliance Scotland, analysed data sent to the Scottish Government by all 32 councils over a four year period.

They found that children who cannot return home for one reason or another, the process of being adopted takes, on average, two to three years.

This compared to an average time of nine months away from home for children reunified with their parents.

By 2016, of the 1,355 children removed from their parents’ care according to data from the Children Looked After Statistics (CLAS), 31 per cent were back at home.

Statistic showed that 11 per cent were placed permanently with other family members; 16 per cent had been adopted; 6 per cent were moving towards adoption; 2 per cent of children were on Permanence Orders; and 2 per cent were no longer looked after, but there was no information on their destination.

A further 32 per cent of children continued to be looked after away from home, and of these, just under half were with family members.

Dr Helen Whincup, lead academic from the university, explained: “What this tells us is that when the child is going home, this happens relatively quickly.

“However, despite the Scottish Government’s explicit commitment to early permanence, other routes to secure a child’s care take much longer, even for our youngest children.

“For those children where adoption is the most appropriate option, there is no evidence that this decision is taken hastily in Scotland.

“In fact, the data shows rather the opposite; it takes approximately two to three years, even for those children who became looked after when they were very young.”

It was also revealed that the time taken to make decisions about 481 children being looked after at home appeared to be influenced by the Children’s Hearings System.

The maximum length of time a child can remain on a Compulsory Supervision Order (CSO) at home is one year, at which point a Children’s Hearings Review has to be held.

The team found a clear spike in the number of youngsters who stopped being looked after at home at, or just before, the 12-month limit.

Co-principal investigator Professor Nina Biehal, from the University of York, added: “This suggests to us that in some cases, decision-making as to whether or not children should remain on a CSO may be system-driven rather than entirely needs-driven.”

Researchers are planning to move into the next phase of the longitudinal study, hoping to track the children’s progress into adolescence and beyond.