Number of adoptions at record high

Adoptions in 2012 totalled 5,206, which is a rise of almost 500 since 2011 and the largest recorded annual increase in the 15 years that equivalent data has been made available.

The majority of children adopted in 2012 were toddlers, with 63 per cent of adoptions involving children aged between one and four years old. This percentage has increased steadily since 1998, when the age group constituted just 34 per cent of all adoptions.

The number of children adopted under the age of one rose by 50 per cent, from 76 in 2011 to 113 in 2012.

The ONS suggested that the results of the report could be due to the Government’s recent drive to improve the adoptions process in England and Wales.

The drive, spearheaded by Michael Gove, who was himself adopted as a child, has included the publication of an Action Plan for Adoption in March 2012 and the release of £150m earlier this year to local authorities to tackle the shortage of adoptive parents and growing numbers of children waiting to be adopted.

Hugh Thornbery, chief executive of the charity Adoption UK, said that while the rise in adoption rates is ‘encouraging’, the figures do not tell the whole story.

‘We must also be mindful that the ONS figures on adoption include not just children adopted from the care system but also adoptions by relatives and step-parents, whereas Government statistics do not.

‘With the number of adoptions rising it is increasingly important that the proposals to improve the adoption system in England and Wales are implemented.’