Spring Update from CCS

Hello all adoptive families,

Well, Spring is hopefully on its way soon and with it lots of change happening around us and here at CCS. I wanted to write to share some of CCS’s news and what is happening in the adoption community more widely. You may have seen this recent article in The Times where adoption, fostering and kinship are explored from the perspective of foster carers and adopters. The number of children with care plans for adoption is significantly lower than it was a few years ago and simultaneously over the last few years the number of approved adopters has increased. CCS has always been proud to be here for the children that often wait the longest to be placed with their future adoptive parents and we need to continue to respond to what is happening in the adoption world around us.

CCS receives its funding from Local Authorities when it places children with our adopters, through the Adoption Support Fund (when we are providing clinical assessments/therapy) and through lots of fundraising efforts which are essential to keep the post-adoption support services through The Centre running each year. We couldn’t run the wide range of support groups and services without the support of you, so please do see what you can do to fundraise for CCS:

Support Us

As CCS is nearly 120 years old we haven’t always been based at Pennywell Road, and the time has come to move on from our current office.
We know the most important part of what makes CCS work well and consistently provide excellent services to families is the people who work here, the relationships we build and the services we offer. We, like many charities, have moved to a hybrid working post-pandemic and alongside a reduced staffing group we no longer need the space Pennywell Road provides. We want to use charity funds for the services to families not on heating empty rooms and fixing lifts. So later this year, when dates are known, we’ll be letting you know where our offices will next be.

We will be continuing to provide services to CCS Families through the Therapy Service and The Centre through 2023 and beyond. Any of the groups or sessions that currently run from Pennywell Road will be relocated and we hope to take advantage of this opportunity to potentially deliver services from multiple sites, helping families from different locations more easily access them.

In January this year, we looked again at our staffing group and recognised that we needed to be a little smaller, in line with how many families we are currently supporting and how many children we are likely to place in the coming years. A small number of staff will be leaving CCS through voluntary redundancies, having worked here for many years and sometimes decades. Your social worker will/would have spoken to you if this is your social worker. We are thankful for everything these colleagues have done to help children and families over the years.

We held an open meeting for anyone connected to CCS in November last year and it was an amazing opportunity to hear from partner agencies about the services they offer families and to give information and have conversations about what CCS was doing. We will do this again later this year so we look forward to seeing you there or at any of the family activities.

Many thanks,

Emma Simpson
CEO of CCS Adoption