Adopting as a Shared Lives Carer...?

[SharedLife]

Hi there,

I was wondering if any of you might have experience with Shared lives carers (sort of the same principle of fostering but with adults) becoming adoptive parents, and still carrying on caring?

We are in approval process currently to become shared lives carers, we are really excited about it. I have experience as foster carer and social care worker for adults with LDs and this is the best of all worlds as far as I am concerned.

In the future my DP and I would like to have more DCs, which due to fertility problems would be via adoption. We are looking at the shared lives being very much a long term option, so I am wondering if this would immediately exclude us from being approved to adopt. We already have one DC, so the matching process for the shared lives service user will take being a suitable match for living with children as the highest priority.

We would have the space for 2 DC and the beauty of shared lives is that I would be primarily home based.

Any opinions or experience would be very welcome!

[Kewcumber]

I have experience of shared lives caring. Is the intention that the person you care for will be a long term placement in your home?

If so then I assume they would be assessed as part of the home study in the same way any adult that you live with would be assessed.

I would expect additional work to be done around the possibility of there being continual changes of an adult in the home which many adopted children would find unsettling. And whether caring for that person would detract from your ability to deal with a child who might have additional needs.

Every person (adult or child) that you have in your home increases the risk to a placement so having a child and a dependent (to some extent) adult in addition to the two of you would make you a higher risk placement.

I certainly don't think it would be an automatic no, but equally I think social workers would be very cautious in their approach.

[SharedLife]

Thanks Kewcumber,

We would hope that the shared lives placement would be long term. I take on board the points about the higher risk, glad to know you don't think its an automatic no though.

[Kewcumber]

i thought the placement would probably be long term (but didn't know enough to assume so!) and also once there's a real person living with you then being able to decide whether adoption is viable for you will be a great deal easier rather than basing it on such a big unknown.