Black Adoption Project – Meet The Team
The Black Adoption Project is the initiative of the Heads of Service of four Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) in London – known as Adopt London, and Laurelle Brown Training and Consultancy. To find out more, scroll down to meet the team.
Adopt London
Formed in 2019 and working together as a partnership, Adopt London North, Adopt London East, Adopt London South and Adopt London West recruit and assess people who want to adopt. We support children who need adoption, the adults they become and their families, as well as other people whose lives are impacted by adoption. We cover 24 London boroughs.
There is a long-standing and persistent challenge in recruiting enough Black adoptive parents, and this has a devastating impact on Black children with a plan for adoption, who are likely to be waiting in care for much longer than other children and may not go on to be adopted at all.
Together the Adopt London RAAs wanted to address this, and the Black Adoption Project was formed. It is recognised that whilst some adoptive parents of non-Black racial identities and ethnicities are strongly placed to adopt and support a Black or mixed ethnicity child – which is right for some children – trans-racial adoption is complex and is not a solution to the disparities for Black and mixed ethnicity children in the adoption system.
The Project includes people with a diverse range of lived and professional experience of Black adoption, Adopt London staff and senior managers, community leaders, senior leaders from our local boroughs, and academic experts.
Lydia Samuel, representing the Heads of Service (HOS) team says,
“Adopt London is responsible for identifying adoptive families for more Black and mixed Black heritage children than RAAs across the country, due to our London demographics. Early in our formation as RAAs in London we therefore agreed that this should be a priority area for us to focus on, recognising that change would be slow and take a long time to achieve, but being committed to learning from those with lived experiences and community perspectives to ensure that meaningful solutions can be found – not sticking plasters.
Through the years since the Project was first initiated, it has remained one of our top priorities as a partnership. We believe that we will achieve lasting change as long as we continue to be open about the barriers that our own systems often create for Black families, and the systemic racism that has to be actively battled.”
Laurelle Brown Training and Consultancy (LBTC)
Laurelle Brown and the team bring their expert knowledge and experience in a range of areas including strategic and operational leadership and management across child protection, safeguarding and inclusion and diversity. You can link up with Laurelle and the team and find out more about their work on LinkedIn.
Charmaine Miller, Programme Lead
Charmaine has worked in the arena of adoption and fostering for over 30 years. Charmaine is passionate about children and their journey through the care system and adoption. She takes pride in supporting families who choose adoption as a positive way of creating their families – and is the founder of two Black Adopters support groups enabling her to hear the adopters’ experiences of their journey.
Charmaine says, ‘I enjoy working with people and building links within our community. I continue to ask myself – can we do better for Black children and young people, and families who choose adoption? Yes, we can!’
The Black Adoption Project Steering Committee
The Steering Committee is a mixed representation of people with lived and professional experience of Black adoption, whose role is to support the Project team through challenge and direction. You can meet Chloe and Francine, just two of our long-standing Steering Committee Members – just click their links.
Black adoptive parents
A community of adoptive parents has formed to become facilitators of a support group for prospective adoptive parents – Let’s Talk About Adoption. This is a key pilot for the Black Adoption Project and sees Black adoptive parents create a safe space to support and encourage families once they enter Stage One of the adoption process through to a child or children being matched
Mentoring sessions or being linked with a buddy are also offered by facilitators as this enables prospective adopters to seek support from the point of enquiry and throughout the adoption process. The lived experience otherwise known as Experts by Experience is an integral part of this pilot project – who better to support prospective adopters than people who have already been through the process and equally, who better to support Black families than people who look like us.
Adoption England
This is the national organisation supporting all Regional Adoption Agencies across England to work together to improve adoption practice. Adoption England has supported the Black Adoption Project through Department for Education grant funding, giving us additional capacity to run and evaluate our pilot projects. Through Adoption England, the Black Adoption Project share regular updates and resources with other RAAs nationally so that learning from the Project can be used in other areas.
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