INSPECTORS have rated Worcestershire County Council’s adoption service as satisfactory with some good features.

The news is a boost for the children’s services department, which was given a notice to improve by the Department for Education after an inspection of the county’s safeguarding and looked after children services in November 2010, when inspectors found safeguarding services were inadequate.

The Ofsted inspection in January found children were safe and their health and education was promoted.

Inspectors said children enjoyed careful and successful matching with adoptive parents who went through fair and well-balanced assessments. Staff were said to receive effective support, while senior managers had a sound overview of the service.

However, shortfalls were identified which meant some children experienced delay – sometimes significant – in being adopted.

In particular, recommendations to improve consistency in child permanence reports made in the last inspection were not met.

The reports were sometimes incomplete and inaccurate and requests by the adoption panel for more information were not always provided quickly. In some cases, this was blamed on frequent changes of social worker.

Some children also waited for more than a year to be matched with adoptive parents because too few adopters were assessed within reasonable timescales. One adoptive parent said it had taken four years between their first meeting and placement.

One issue causing delay was that not enough sections of the community were recruited, with no single male carer or same sex couple approved as adoptive parents in the last three years.

However, the report found children lived in safe, nurturing and loving homes in the care of adoptive parents. There were extensive checks on the suitability and safety of adopters’ homes and adopters were trained in safeguarding.

Staff were also checked as being suitable to work with children.

The way the service helped children achieve and enjoy what they did was rated as good. Their sense of identity was promoted through life story work and the inclusion of birth parents, wherever possible, in any plans.

The service’s organisation was said to be satisfactory.

Councillor Liz Eyre, cabinet member with responsibility for children’s social care and safeguarding, said: “I am delighted to see a report which highlights areas of good practice.

“This is another area of children’s services with dedicated staff, passionate for good outcomes for young people.

“We are working as hard and as fast as we can to find loving, stable homes for children, but only where it is appropriate. It takes time to get it right for all concerned.”