MORE parents are needed to adopt children in Wiltshire because the number of people coming forward wanting to add a child to their family has fallen.

But children in the authority’s care are being adopted more quickly than five years ago. Wiltshire Council described it as a significant drop from 88 adoptive parents in 2017 to 66 last year.

Cabinet member for children’s services Laura Mayes said: “It happened nationally as well. We got to a period when we realised we had more prospective adopters than children to adopt. These things go in cycles and we were concerned we had too many adoptive parents and left them disappointed without children to adopt, now it has tilted the other way so we are increasing the work to make sure there are enough parents for our children.”

Between 2013-2016, it took on average 545 days for a child in care to be adopted. By 2015-2018, it had dropped to 392, and children spent 153 fewer days in care. Last year it took 326 days on average for children to be adopted.

Cllr Mayes added: “The human side of this is that when we’ve made the decision adoption it is the right decision for a child’s life the sooner we can get that child adopted the better their lives will be."

“In Wiltshire if it is deemed that adoption is the best move for a child whatever the circumstances, it doesn’t matter how hard we think that child is to adopt we try our hardest. That could be sibling groups or children with disabilities, for example.”

The cabinet also heard that Adoption West, a partnership between six authorities, had been delayed by two months and would now be launched in March.

Adoption West will join up adoption services in Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, North Somerset, BaNES and Bristol.