Message from CCS Adoption

Trustees

The Trustees are delighted to announce the appointment of Emma Simpson as our CEO. We wish her every success in the future.

The Trustees have every confidence in the future success of CCS under Emma’s leadership and all of her team.

We look forward to meeting you at some of our upcoming CCS events which will be announced in future newsletters.

With best wishes,

Sally and the Trustees at CCS

CEO

Hello all adopters and adoption professionals,

I am writing to you as CCS’s new CEO. Having worked at CCS since 2016 and as a social worker in the fields of Adoption and Child Care for nearly 20 years it is an honour to have been appointed to this position to lead the charity in the years ahead. CCS has a reputation for its innovation and high-quality support to families and what I see every day is how the dedication of its staff makes this possible. We’re incredibly proud of our Ofsted Outstanding rating which we’ve had through four inspections since 2010. But much more importantly than that, over the last ten years, the staff at CCS have helped 220 families become approved adopters and helped 306 children come to live with their new adoptive parents. These are just numbers but all staff here can picture the characters and personalities of these kids who have had such difficult starts in life, and with the joint efforts of adopters and staff have come to join their adoptive families. We love seeing you at all our events, which this week include activities at the Zoo, Wild Place, Family weekend event, Paddleboarding and more!

We have all lived through some difficult times over the last few years and the impact of Covid, financial pressures on charities and specifically the changing climate of adoption have meant that CCS alongside many charities has had to carefully look at how we run our organisation. Across the UK the courts are making more decisions for children who can’t live with their birth parents, to live with Kinship carers (Family and Friends), rather than adoption. This has had an impact on many adoption charities, and we recognise that we need to be here for the many children who are still waiting for an adoptive family, but that we need to be a little smaller. Some of you may have heard the sad news that another Voluntary Adoption Agency (Families for Children, based in Devon) has sadly closed this month due to financial difficulties. Over the last few months, we have had to look at how we staff the charity and what services we run and have made some changes. I want to reassure you that we are now confident that we will continue to be here for many years to come, supporting you and helping more children find adoptive families. However, like all charities part of our financial plan is to continue to raise funds through a range of fundraising methods, in order to sustain our wide range of services, there are details below of how you can help us. The new management team will be introduced in the coming weeks through the newsletter and website.

The need for us to increase our fundraising is more important than ever, so thank you to everyone who recently donated to us for supporting our work. We would still be hugely grateful for your support as a one-off or a regular donation. There are lots of ideas about how you can fundraise for us.

We are proud of the innovative and creative ways in which CCS staff have responded to the need to adapt our services, in order to ensure we are providing high-quality, sustainable services and that families have equal access to them. We are committed to ensuring these services meet the needs of families and you will have seen some changes in our offer which have come from feedback from children, families and staff.

We will continue to provide lots of support through our Social Work Service, the Adoption Support and our therapeutic services. Since 2017 we grew our staffing team from 35 staff members up to 56 at our greatest, as we received various short-term grants and at a time when there were lots more children needing us to find adopters for them. We have now returned to a staffing team of 33 staff members, which will still enable us to provide a range of adoption support services, but be the right size agency for the children who are waiting for their new adoptive families. We know that it is more likely that the priority children (brothers + sisters, children from an ethnic minority background, children with disabilities or health issues, or children aged 4 and above) will be the children who need us to find adopters for them.

All the staff here at CCS look forward to seeing you at the many events that we have planned for the Autumn and information about other ways that you can get involved will be coming soon.

Wishing you all a happy summer,

Emma Simpson