An extra £110,000 has been earmarked to pay for three more social workers in a bid to get more of the district’s youngsters adopted, it has been revealed, as the Government unveiled its own Adoption Action Plan.

Bradford Council’s Ralph Berry, the executive member for children’s services, said they had already anticipated how to handle the adoption issue before Education Secretary Michael Gove announced measures yesterday to find permanent homes for children.

Figures in January showed that there are 918 “looked-after” youngsters in the Council’s care system compared to 890 seven months ago.

Coun Berry said that the extra social workers would help achieve better outcomes and avoid youngsters being “placed inappropriately”.

“It would be nice if Mr Gove gave us some money to cover our costs,” he said. “I agree with Mr Gove’s intentions. All I would want to be sure on with these latest proposals is to make sure the matching process is done properly.

“We need to be very careful to make sure we are not creating a system that rushes headlong into decisions before it is properly considered. I think proper investment of social workers can get this done in Bradford.”

The Adoption Action Plan to be published next month is set to end practices which prevent children being adopted by parents of a different ethnic background, as well as bureaucratic hurdles which force would-be adopters to wait for years.

Mr Gove – who was adopted at the age of four months – has said it was “disgraceful” that black children are three times less likely to be adopted from care than white ones and “outrageous” for them to be denied a loving home because of a “misguided” belief that race is the most important factor in considering potential adoptive parents.

He has made clear that he wants dramatic changes to “radically” increase the supply of adoptive parents and reduce the length of time children stay in care. He said: “By changing our attitude towards adoption, reducing the unnecessary bureaucracy of the assessment process and freeing up professionals to rely on their own judgment, I feel confident that we will be able to create a more efficient and effective adoption system.”

Jonathan Ewen, of Barnardo’s, said the charity agreed that the speed and quality of decision making throughout the adoption process must be both transparent and urgently improved. He said: “We also need to encourage people to come forward to adopt children – including older and those from ethnic minorities.”