More than £200,000 has been spent in the last year on paying outside agencies to place 14 Bradford children with adoptive parents, it has been revealed.

The huge cost of caring for “looked-after children” was revealed as national figures show that adoption rates have dropped significantly from 4,000 babies adopted throughout England in 1976 to just 60 babies placed with families last year.

The Department of Education’s national figures show that children are now waiting an average of two years and seven months before being adopted, with the process taking more than three years in a quarter of cases.

Twenty children in Bradford have been waiting for more than a year to be adopted, including one child with major health problems who has had a liver transplant.

The cost of placing each of the 14 Bradford children with another local authority or voluntary adoption agency was between £13,000 and £27,000 per child.

The total £212,000 sum was defended by Councillor Ralph Berry, the council’s portfolio holder for children’s and young people’s services, who said they could involve specific children with complex needs.

“If we haven’t got anyone suitable on our books, we will work with all different agencies if it is taking too long to find a placement,” he said.

“We will always need to use these specialist agencies or another local authority as there are some babies with complex needs.”

In Bradford, there are 890 “looked-after children” in the care system including 107 babies and children aged up to seven, with the individual cost of caring for them around £40,000 in some cases.

There are currently 66 children in the district waiting for adoption, including 41 aged under four and 25 with serious developmental problems such as autism or foetal alcohol syndrome.

Coun Berry said that Bradford was doing better than the national figures suggest.

* Read the full feature in today's T&A.