Social care services for children are always changing and responding to new challenges. Nowhere is this more evident than in adoption services which have had to change and adapt to new legislation and guidance, new patterns of family life and an ever growing need for permanent families for children and young people coming into care with complex needs, disabilities and difficult life histories.

The families we approve as adopters now are no longer, on the whole, traditional couples. They reflect much more closely the diversity of modern family life in the 21st century – single people, same sex couples, older adopters, many of whom have natural children and step-children and all have varied life-histories and experiences which they bring to adoptive parenting.

This is part of the reason for Warwickshire’s success in placing children for adoption and why the county places three times as many children now as we did four years ago. This year alone over 60 children have been placed, including sibling groups, children up to the age of 10 and children with complex needs.