Adopters offered new family support programme

Cllr Pat Sullivan, Rochdale's Shadow Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Families; Cllr Barbara Brownridge, Oldham's Cabinet Member for Social Care and Public Health; Louise Howarth and Madeleine Baldon, After Adoption; Cllr Surinder Biant, Rochdale's Assistant to Cabinet Member for Children, Schools & Families; Mark Carriline, Executive Director, Bury Children's Services

People in Rochdale who want to adopt a child, or have already adopted, can now get extra help with building relationships with their adopted children.

In what is the first partnership of its kind in the North West, Rochdale, Bury and Oldham Councils have joined with charity After Adoption to offer the SafeBase Parenting Programme to their adoptive parents.

The  programme is designed to create a strong foundation for loving and lasting relationships within adopted families. Parents are able to access SafeBase training when they have just taken on a child through to many years after the completing the adoption.

The council's £30,000 spend in the programme is being match-funded by the Timpson Foundation and their chairman, businessman John Timpson, who has fostered more than 90 children and adopted two.

Councillor Donna Martin, Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Families at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “We are delighted that adoptive families in Rochdale will be able to benefit from the highly specialised support offered by SafeBase. We have invested in this programme over a three-year period, which will provide a longer term resource that complements the extensive support we already provide to our adoptive parents.”

Lynn Charlton, Chief Executive of After Adoption, said: "I am pleased to welcome Rochdale as part of the 39 partners working with After Adoption to deliver SafeBase. We have seen first-hand how the programme gives adoptive parents the confidence to develop their parenting skills and builds resilience to help them parent children with very complex needs.”