idence that effective use of VAAs has a positive impact on finding suitable and timely placements at a lower cost for local authorities. It shows that local authorities have under-estimated their own costs and that this has influenced their belief about the costs of VAA placements: the true costs of both VAA and local authority family finding are almost identical at around £36,000, which is similar to the cost of the child remaining in foster care for 18 months. The research 88 found that where adoption is the right option for a child, a timely adoptive placement could save approximately £25,000 for each subsequent year, after the first, that the child is not in care. 4.20. Where a suitable family is not readily identifiable , the agency may need to make use of resources designed to feature children with the aim of encouraging prospective adopters to come forward, such as BAAF’s ‘Be my parent’ or Adoption UK’s ‘Children Who Wait’, subject of course to appropriate consents. And in using these resources, the agency should not put barriers in place, such as specifying the ethnicity of the prospective adopter or ruling out single prospective adopters. The emphasis should be on what skills and qualities the prospective adopter must have in order to meet the child’s needs. It is also important that any enquirers responding through these routes be followed up quickly and where not suitable for the specific child are signposted to other agencies so they are not lost to adoption. Proposing a placement: AAR 31 4.21. Where the agency is considering the placement of a child for adoption it may identify a number of possible prospective adopters. It needs to compare their potential to provide a stable and permanent family for the child, based on the child’s permanence report (CPR), t