This message was emailed to all registered Link Maker users on 8th July 2016:
Highest number of children matched on Link Maker
You can now find a graph of the latest quarterly statistics from Link Maker on our data page (not on mobile devices), and on our Facebook page. For April to June there was a steady increase in the number of matches, with 175 children finding new homes with 120 families. The steady increase in the number of children added to Link Maker over the past year has continued, and for the first time in a year the number of approved adopters added has increased slightly.
Helping more children
Thank you to everyone for your patience during our major system update recently. While a lot of this work can't yet be seen, it was an essential step towards Link Maker being able to help find placements for children in short-term fostering and residential care. We were pleased to see Sir Martin Narey talk about the importance of this in his report on residential care that was published this week, and his recommendation that the Department for Education urge all local authorities and providers to make use of our new commissioning tool when it launches in August.
Changes to our matching system
I thought it would be helpful to clarify some of what has, and hasn't, changed on Link Maker in the recent update:
- Practitioners can now hide child profiles from families who have indicated they would not be able to meet the needs of the child.
- For a long time, practitioners have been able to make child profiles available only to families that meet all of their preferences (for age, gender etc). They can now hide a profile based on just one or more of their preferences, meaning profiles can be more made more accurately available.
- Profiles can still be made available within certain areas very accurately, by defining areas on a map. This feature has been available for a long time.
- Practitioners will be able to see child profiles that their families cannot see, but they will not be able to show interest on behalf of families from whom the profile is currently hidden. We will be giving practitioners more information and more options in this area with future updates.
- Users now choose exactly which type of profiles they would like to receive alerts for. The green banner indicating that new profiles have been added since last login no longer appears to families.
Our focus, as always, is on creating the widest choice for children to help them find families that best meet their needs. Despite the growing number of matches being made through Link Maker, many families are still waiting for a painfully long time. We know that two of the big frustrations are being turned down for potential matches, and not being able to see more profiles. Unfortunately, while there are still so many more adopters than children waiting, there isn't an easy answer. The more profiles that can be seen by more families, the greater the number of families that will be inevitably disappointed after showing interest. There is also the issue of privacy for children, whose profiles (we believe) should only be shared as widely as necessary to find them a suitable match. We launched Link Maker at the point that the number of children coming through for adoption dramatically dropped, and we have tried to maintain a sensible balance throughout this difficult time. We believe that allowing practitioners to choose how widely to list profiles, or alternatively to keep profiles hidden while making their own selection of families, is the most sensible approach.
The Children and Social Work Bill
This bill is progressing though parliament and some of the changes in it are intended by Government to "tip the balance in favour of permanent adoption, where that is the right thing for the child…". Time will tell what effect this will have, and you can find a review of the bill, and some opinions on it, here.
Groups, and finding other families
Finally, a reminder that Link Maker is designed not just to find matches, but to help families find each other for support. If you don't already have a community profile it easy and free of charge to create one, and lets you:
- Find other families near you for chats and playdates. You can find other families with children of a similar age, for example.
- Join groups such as 'The Waiting Room', 'Growing together', or Single Adopter's Link'.
- Make full use of Link Maker's Q&A, where advice is shared by practitioners as well as other families on a wide range of topics.
Families can find these features under the 'Community' menu. If you need any help with these or any other features, our support team will be happy to assist. You can email them at [email protected] or give them a call on 0843 886 0040
Best wishes,
Andy Leary-May
Chief Executive
