Northern Ireland recorded 90 adoptions from care in the year to 31 March 2026, down from 96 in the preceding year, new annual figures show. The children were aged three years and 10 months on average when adoption orders were made.
The figures cover children adopted from care during 2025/26. They do not describe every child in care, every adoption application or cases still moving through the process. Individual circumstances are not set out in the published data.
Time from care to adoption
On average, three years and one month passed between a child’s last entry into care and an adoption order. That was five months shorter than the average of three years and six months reported for the 2024/25 group.
The Department of Health’s annual measure for timeliness is the proportion of adoptions completed within three years of a child’s last entry into care. It has an ongoing target of 90 per cent. The latest figure was 59 per cent, up from 48 per cent a year earlier, but still below that target.
The timing of an adoption can differ because each child’s circumstances and route through care are different. The data do not identify a single reason for the overall timing figures, so the change should not be treated as proof of a particular cause or outcome for individual children.
Stages in the process
The published figures track several points between entry to care and the adoption order. The average time from the proposal that adoption was in a child’s best interests to the order was two years and two months. From last entry into care to the relevant best-interest decision, the average was one year and seven months, compared with one year and 10 months in 2024/25.
There are separate routes to adoption in the returns. Concurrent carers, who are approved both to foster and to adopt while a child’s future is being decided, accounted for 44 of the 90 adoptions. There were 17 adoptions by approved adopters, 15 by dual-approved carers and 14 by foster carers who later adopted the child in their care.
The average time from last entry into care to an adoption order varied across those routes. It was two years and nine months for dual-approved carers, three years for concurrent carers, two years and 11 months for approved adopters and three years and 10 months for former foster carers. The figures are averages across small groups and are not a guide to how long any individual case will take.
How the figures were compiled
The annual return was collected from Northern Ireland’s five Health and Social Care Trusts. It records children adopted from care and dates at key stages of the process. The Department says some stage-by-stage calculations can exclude records where the relevant dates are unavailable, meaning totals may vary between measures.
The data are published in aggregate and do not identify children or families. Annual figures can be revised. Their value is in showing the scale and timing of completed adoptions during the year, rather than predicting future cases or judging the circumstances of any child.
