Several children were waiting for a home after being awarded an adoption placement order on the Isle of Wight as of March, new figures show.

It comes as the number of approved families waiting to adopt has fallen steadily since the Covid-19 pandemic, with more children now waiting for a placement than homes available.

Adoption agency Coram has raised concerns about the supply of families willing to adopt and is calling for a more diverse range of families to consider adoption.

Coram and Department for Education figures show, as of the end of March, six children on the Isle of Wight were waiting to be adopted by a family after a placement order had been issued.

Across England, 2,580 children with a placement order were waiting to be matched with a home – the highest figure since December 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, the number of families volunteering to adopt has steadily decreased from a pandemic peak in March 2022, falling by almost a third to 1,800 as of March.

At the end of every quarter since June last year, more children have been waiting with a placement order than families approved to adopt.

The figures also show 2,940 children nationally were placed with an adopting family in the year to March, but the time it takes for different children to find a placement varied greatly due to age and characteristics.

Of the children adopted last year, those aged five and over waited an average of three years and 220 days from entering care to being adopted.

This dropped to two years and 24 days for under-fives.

It took an average of three years and 139 days for a disabled child to be adopted last year, while ethnic minority children had to wait two years and 200 days, both higher than the average for all children of two years and 134 days.

On the Isle of Wight, seven children were adopted last year, waiting an average of one year and 316 days.