Adoption

The government inherited a situation marked by a growing disparity between the number of children awaiting adoptive families and the number of approved adopters. In 2024/25, Adoption England launched a national recruitment campaign funded by the government, which led to a modest increase in approved adopters to 2,230, which is a rise of 0.5% from the previous year. We acknowledge that further efforts are needed to close the adopter sufficiency gap. That is why, this year, we have doubled the funding allocated to Adoption England for adopter recruitment, increasing it to £1 million.