The act made several changes to the adoption system, most of which were designed to generally streamline the process, making it easier for adoptions to happen, while ensuring child safety and welfare. Some of the key points of this part of the Act are as follows:
- Promotes 'fostering for adoption,' in which approved adopters are allowed to foster children during the wait for formal court approval.
- Adoption agencies will no longer have to search for a perfect or even a partial ethnic match between potential adopters and children. This is designed to reduce delays in finding adopters for vulnerable children.
- Gives potential adopters access to the adoption register so they can search the database themselves (subject to safeguarding checks), again removing delays and reducing the time spent on adoption registers.
- Introduced personal budgets for adoptive parents, allowing them to choose the type of support and how it is provided.
- Adoptive parents receive the same rights to leave and pay as birth parents.