On top of a pile of papers on Carol Homden's desk is a programme for Ballet Shoes, the National Theatre's adaptation of the Noel Streatfeild novel. In the story, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are adopted by an absentminded paleontologist. While he travels the world in search of dinosaur bones, the girls live in a ramshackle house under the watchful eye of Nana. It's an old-fashioned, heart-warming, if slightly idealised, portrayal of adoption.
One trustee from the adoption agency Coram, Britain's oldest children's charity, of which Homden is chief executive, describes it as a love letter to a "chosen family". For her part, Homden hoped that when the show opened last year it might encourage more people to adopt "at a time when we need more loving families to come forward for the growing numbers of children waiting".
We meet in Homden's Bloomsbury office, just a stone's throw from the original site of the Foundling Hospital, where Thomas Coram first established a home in 1739 for children who found themselves "exposed and deserted". Two hundred and eighty six years on, Coram is still meeting that same need, but Britain is now, Homden says, "not a country for children", lamenting the failure of politicians on both sides of the aisle to prioritise young people. Meanwhile, adoption - which, she says, Britain has long had "a huge heart" and "huge propensity" for - is proving a hard sell for modern prospective parents.
Coram's figures show the number of people seeking to adopt has fallen to its lowest rate for four years. Last year, just 2,200 people in England were approved for adoption compared to more than 2,900 in 2019. In the past decade, the numbers have fallen by 57 per cent. In January, just 1,800 adults were approved for adoption compared to nearly 2,600 in 2019. In the past decade, the numbers have fallen by more than 65 per cent. In December, there were 2,820 children waiting to be adopted in England - half had been waiting to be matched for more than 18 months since entering care. Across Britain, many more (around 107,000) flow in and out of the care system without a realistic expectation of the permanent solution of adoption.
Behind the drop in people seeking to adopt is what Homden, 64, describes as a "texture of change". There is a "delay" in both single people and couples investigating adoption, as "women - and their partners or on their own - [are] choosing to have children later", and sometimes not at all (in 2023, the fertility rate in Britain dropped to the lowest level on record). There are also, simply due to the pattern of birth rates, currently fewer people in the age bracket that might normally consider adoption.
There is an argument for allowing older people with more time and resources to adopt. "Life expectancy has extended and more people are forming relationships later in life," she says. You could "in principle adopt when you're 60", though there would be a lot to consider. "Coming forward to adopt when you have a long-term health condition or other caring responsibilities, for example elderly parents. These are all factors that have to be considered."
Then there is the ongoing cost of living crisis, which means a generation of prospective parents are still living with their own parents. "There are a lot of people in their 20s or even into their 30s still living in their family home because of the challenges of being able to afford housing," says Homden.
But one of the biggest drivers, she says, is the increase in access to fertility treatments. The fact that IVF, surrogacy, egg and sperm donations and egg freezing are now more widely available and have better outcomes is clearly a good thing. But an unforeseen side effect is the impact on adoption. As IVF has become "more successful", she says, it has become "a contributory factor in the shortage of adopters that we currently find ourselves having".
Last year marked 45 years since the first baby was conceived using IVF. In Britain, the live birth rate for IVF has tripled for women under 38 since the early 1990s. Even so, fewer than half of cycles are successful. "I wish we could somehow find a way of communicating more clearly that adoption is an alternative to what can be an extremely emotional journey in IVF," says Homden. "Obviously it's marvellous, the scientific advance, [and] that so many people are succeeding in having their family through IVF. But for some people, they embark upon multiple rounds and that is in itself a different form of loss and emotional trauma.
"It sometimes feels [as if] the option of actually using that emotion in a different way, to give a home to a child that desperately needs one, comes quite late."
She can understand why adoption might, for many, be something they consider only after first trying fertility treatment. "I think it's perfectly understandable that people are looking to form their families - that is what is driving it." But while people strive to get pregnant, children in Britain are waiting for the love and security of a long-term family.
There are, for example, "quite a lot of children waiting in sibling pairs", she says. Adopting older children is clearly a different proposition to taking on a newborn. You can imagine how if you have undergone several rounds of IVF and hold an image of yourself nurturing a tiny baby, the idea of adopting two older siblings might at first feel many miles from the family you had imagined.
"The natural human desire is to be able to parent the child that becomes a member of your family for as long as possible and as early as possible," she says, though Coram finds older couples who meet later in life often "make wonderful parents for older children and siblings".
Agencies like Coram "take considerable care" when working with adopters who are "very recent from IVF treatment", says Homden. "It's not usual that adoption would be considered [while] IVF is taking place."
It's important, she says, to be in the right place emotionally when you embark on the adoption journey. "Have you come to terms with those losses that might be very fresh, very raw? If you're on your own, that brings particular questions about [whether you] have the support network. If you are in a partnership, are both partners at the same point?
"This is a process that takes time. What often gets asked is why does it all take so long? I would say it doesn't." The time it takes to adopt roughly equates to the time it might take to start fertility, become pregnant and give birth. "The actual journey time is about a year, so it's about the same."
It can take longer if people have a specific idea of the child they are hoping to adopt, she says. "Occasionally, people will wait longer [to make a choice]. But that may be because they have a very particular thing in their mind."
She is careful not to criticise, but suggests it is a mistake to come to adoption with a rigid idea of the child you are hoping to meet, or to "approach a system saying, 'I only want this - a child with these characteristics, or from this demographic.'"
At Coram, they are increasingly seeing "the importance of consideration of mental health conditions" for adopters, she says. These days, prospective parents also have a "greater awareness about genetics and what the consequences for a child might be of their genetic inheritance". "For example, are conditions known? Are they not known?"
Genetics have long been a consideration for adopters, but there has been "a scientific evolution", meaning there is a greater understanding of genetic conditions, so the focus among adopters has "increased".
It's harder, she says, to find adopted parents for children with special education needs. "Part of what you're dealing with in the process of adoption is developmental uncertainty. You may know about a genetic disorder or a health condition. You may have a diagnosis of autism. But you probably wouldn't have a diagnosis of ADHD, and you may not fully know what the experiences of the child had been."
Homden has been chief executive at Coram for 18 years having previously held senior positions at the Prince's Trust (where she found the then Prince of Wales to be an "inspiring" boss) and the British Museum. She is also on the board for the National Autistic Society and Diabetes UK, both deeply personal positions - her eldest son, Freddie, is autistic and learning disabled and was recently diagnosed with diabetes. Freddie is now 34 and lives in supported accommodation, but as a child he had periods of permanent school exclusion. There were years when he had "had absolutely no support whatsoever, no education", she says.
"[He'd have] three hours a week with a tutor who couldn't even stay in the room with him. [He was] even excluded from the local authority's own special educational needs and disability holiday scheme. There was a period when the only organisation that made him welcome was the scouts."
So while Homden doesn't have personal experience of adoption, it's clear her passion for making Britain a country that works for its most vulnerable children runs deep. "I have a connection to complex needs," she says. "I have lived the navigation of statutory services. That is what Coram does. Adoption is one facet of it. [There are also] legal rights and educational exclusion.
"How many CEOs of charities have the experience of permanent educational exclusion for their child, navigating seven professionals in multi-agency teams, having five changes of social worker in eight months notified by email bounce backs? [How many] have actually experienced, up front and personally, violence by child against parent?"
Homden and her husband, Steve, a digital author and artist, live in north London. They consider themselves to have been in the best possible position to get Freddie the support he needed, and it was still impossible at times. "If it was that hard for me with all of those advantages, I am going to fight until I die for those who don't have [them]."
It makes sense, then, that she feels people often have the wrong idea about adoption. They forget one key thing: "Adoption is a service for children," she says, not for parents.
Adoption isn't just a solution for people who want a family, it's an essential service meant to give children whom the court has considered should be adopted for their wellbeing and safety the chance of a loving home.
"We have the highest care population and the lowest proportion leaving care to adoption than we've had in the last 40 years," she says. In England, there are around 83,000 children currently in care. "That delay is hugely consequential for those children. [It] may compromise their wellbeing and their security. The delay in making a plan may well lead to the child losing their chance of adoption, because the vast majority of children who are adopted are aged under five. You age out of adoption because, understandably, potential adopters want to be in the life of their child at the earliest possible point and for the longest possible time."
Homden says there are children that "we are not matching that we could match". She is calling on the Government to "re-establish the National Adoption Register for England". The Tories closed the register in 2019. The plan was to replace it with regional adoption agencies, which were to speed up the process. In fact, the opposite happened. "There was a slow down and that slow down is not to the benefit of children," she says.
The register held the details of children and approved adopters. Without it, "several hundred children would each year not be matched who could have been matched", says Homden.
Labour has picked up the baton on children up to a point, says Homden. "There are some important directions of travel, but they're not enough. Do we really think that society is doing everything it needs to do in the face of the post-pandemic consequences? Of a generation unique in history for living its life digitally first? With the levels of disadvantage and disproportionality? We need to do better."
Schools in particular have reached a hinge point post-pandemic, she says. "We are probably on the cusp of the biggest redefinition of the purpose of school that we have seen in decades."
She worries about the rise in homeschooling and has called for there to be a register for children who are, as she puts it, "home schooled in inverted commas". "We have a duty to know where our children are and every child has a right to education. The bigger issue is to do with children who are missing."
Children like Sara Sharif, who was taken out of school under the ruse of being homeschooled, covering up the abuse she was suffering. "An appalling case," she says. "If there is just one child like Sara that having this register prevents then we must do that."
It's easy to blame the pandemic, but in fact "all the trends were well in train and visible before the pandemic", she says. "Apart from the consequence of the choice to close schools."
Was it the wrong one? "I think we may well as a society come to think that it was," she says, adding: "The consequences to children are going to last their whole lives, and we've never before taken that step."
Coram is advising the Covid inquiry on the impact of the pandemic on children and young people. For Homden, one of the most serious consequences of lockdown was the way it caused a breakdown in the relationship between families and schools. "At a top level we have compromised the contract between parents and school and between children and school. And we have seen a considerable increase - a doubling - in school non attendance." In the last academic year, nearly a fifth of pupils in England were persistent absentees, according to government figures, compared to a little over 10 per cent pre-pandemic.
It's clear she is terribly proud of the work Coram does, and of being the "inheritor" of a legacy with the Foundling Hospital. Among the best days at Coram are the regular parties they host where prospective parents come to visit children waiting to be adopted. "On those occasions, you see them fall in love," she says.
I wonder how often children are not matched with adopted parents. "Sadly more often than one would wish. It's about 20 per cent."
If she could get in a room with Sir Keir Starmer, what would she tell him? "Just think more about the children. The future of our society depends upon the future of our children, and children can't wait."