Brexit has been listed as one of the reasons why fewer people are signing up to adopt children.

Other factors causing the shortfall include financial confidence, IVF and the simple factor that people are becoming parents at an older age.

But while numbers are down in Kirklees – with recruitment remaining “a significant challenge” – experts say the trend is reflected both regionally and nationally.

A year after the formation of One Adoption West Yorkshire, the country’s first Regional Adoption Agency (RAA), service delivery manager Mandy Prout said the success of the organisation was a testament to the partnership between the five participating local authorities.

'Adoption recruitment has decreased for the fourth year in a row.'

factors causing the shortfall include financial confidence, IVF and the simple factor that people are becoming parents at an older age.

And she added that placement provision – the amount of time a child waits before being placed with an adoptive family – appears to have remained stable despite the decrease in adopters.

“That’s the most important measure,” she said. “It’s about children and how long they wait to be be placed with their family.”

Experts say the trend is reflected both regionally and nationally.

Reporting to the Corporate Parenting Board at Huddersfield Town Hall, she revealed that adoption recruitment had decreased for the fourth year in a row.

When asked why by Green councillor Karen Allison Ms Prout said that the reasons for it were “multi-faceted and complex.

“It’s things such as people’s confidence financially currently,” she said. “People say it’s linked to Brexit, but then they say everything is linked to Brexit so we won’t go too far down that route.

Town Hall.

“But also it’s very practical things like the increase of being able to get funding to have babies in other ways, like IVF. People come into parenting later in life. Then by the time they go down the IVF route the thinking is that people then have come to the fact that they’re not going to have children and so therefore move on.

“I think it’s really complex and no-one’s found the absolute answer. It’s a number of things all coming together to mitigate against us unfortunately.”

She added that while quite a lot of local authorities are struggling to get adopters and then struggling to allocate them, West Yorkshire was in a good position in that people coming through the door were able to progress through the system promptly due to a big increase in adoption support.

'Money isn't with us anyone in the way that it was'

When asked what level of government funding remained to support adoption services, Ms Prout said that additional money “isn’t with us anymore in the way that it was.”

She added: “In the way that we have seen money being decreased across all services it’s the same for adoption. In terms of additional funding the whole of West Yorkshire has been one of the lucky agencies to be able to secure some funding around adoption support.”

She said funding had been given to set up a Leeds-based centre of excellence serving all of West Yorkshire and that a further 12-month allocation of cash was likely.

Expressing her frustration, Clr Allison said the scenario “seems so wrong.”

She added: “It just seems so wrong when it all comes down to funding,” she added. “These are kids. They’ve had a rough start and it’s all down to funding for what happens. It just doesn’t seem right.”

Ms Prout responded: “It’s heartbreaking, it really is. But it’s about looking at the resources that we’ve got and how we deploy them.”