A £2.3 million Welsh Government investment for adoption support services in Wales has been announced, as has the new ‘Adoption Register Wales’.  The investment will be spent through the National Adoption Service’s five regions across Wales to strengthen adoption support services, enhance staff levels and improve ways of working in key areas of support for adoptive families.

The new register is an essential part of the matching process in many adoptions and will support prompt family finding. No longer just for children who’ve been waiting the longest, but for all children with an adoption plan in Wales, the register gives adopters more say in their family-finding.

Suzanne Griffiths, Director of Operations for the National Adoption Service, said:

‘The new register supports our commitment to the best possible family finding and matching for children and adopters. It is a bilingual service making it more inclusive and also gives adopters supported access to view children’s profiles and make decisions, with the support of their Social Worker.’

Part of the investment has also been used to match fund an additional £250,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund, granted to Adoption UK to deliver its Therapeutic Education Support Services in Adoption programme (TESSA).

Ann Bell, Development Manager, Adoption UK Cymru, said:

‘TESSA gives an adoptive family access to a clinical psychologist and an experienced adopter, giving them coping strategies and an insight into how other parents have worked through challenges to help their family flourish. Early intervention is crucial to successful adoptions and TESSA has proved extremely effective in Northern Ireland, with adoptive families saying what a huge difference it has made to them. The additional funding from Welsh Government will significantly increase the scale and reach of TESSA in Wales, making it more widely available to new adoptive families.’

For more information on adopting in Wales, visit www.adopt4vvc.org