Half as Many Children Put up For Adoption

[ShootingStarsinthesky]

We had a visit from our SW today who says that Judges are not approving Adoption Orders in as many numbers as they did 6-8 months ago and as a result she asked us if we would consider fostering a child until adulthood. We would be paid of course, have regular visits from a SW and the child would still visit their birth family. We said no to this as we have been trying to adopt for a year and half (6 months ago we had a an introduction break down). She said that we might have to wait quite a time to be able find a child to adopt. Has anyone else been offered this and said no they wanted to adopt a child?

I've never heard of people being asked this at the stage you've reached, but I think you are completely right to stick to your guns. As MrsDV says, they're completely different, and if fostering isn't right for you, you shouldn't be swayed towards doing it.

I also hope you find your child soon

Oh ShootingStars - I was wondering how you were getting on. And so sorry that you have still not found your child.

I find this request very strange. Did they say why they thought it would take a long time to find your child? How discouraging.

I would echo what the wise ladies above have said. And hang out for adoption if fostering is not right for you.

I was totally miffed by this I have to say as you say fostering and adoption are so different. I am attending a Parenting Course at a Private Adoption Agency (paid for by the council) and the adopters there have heard of this but thought this type of fostering is very confusing for a child. Anyhow we haven't spent the best part of 2 years struggling to adopt a child of our own to then foster one with the child seeing their birth parents and visits from SW until they are adults!!

We hope to go to panel in January but have been told it may not be until the end of February as there is paperwork to do and they are busy. We are now on our 3rd SW. We have been asked to attend as many courses as possible, I have gained some child experience at a private and council nursery, helped run Rainbows, am attending Parenting Courses, read many books on adoption and these are all to be written about to prove we have done all we can to prevent things going wrong again.

Yesterday I found it hard to stay positive after our SW said there are as many as 40 couples going for each child at the moment.

We only had our child placed a year ago. Has it changed that much? We had people approaching us, to see if we would take a child/ren on their books. I am sure there are 40 going for the seemingly very easy baby... But surely not with the majority. I just don't get it. Maybe I am being naive.

Shooting - I hadn't realised you had to go through the whole adoption approval panel again. I really sympathise for you.

Hi Hels20 it would seem there have been quite a lot of changes in 6 months from what we have heard from our SW. In as much as fewer judges are passing Placement Orders. They do not think SWs have looked into all the possibility for a child as they have been in so much of a rush to keep to the shorter guidelines set out by the government. It is confusing because if more people foster the local authorities will of course have to pay them and adoption for them is the cheaper option generally and with more cuts forecast next year I wonder if things will change again.

We were asked to consider having a baby taken from birth but this holds the possibility (though apparently unlikely) fact that the birth family of the mother or father or indeed any relative of either could try to be given custody of the child after you have parented it for months. We did not know if we could cope with this scenario, so we had to decline this idea.

We are going to have to go back to panel as it is over a years since we were first passed as adopters and so we have to wait to do this. Until this is done our SW cannot start looking for a match for us.

It is good to hear that you have had your child placed with you a year ago and I hope things are going well. It is also good to hear that you have been asked taking another child, do you think that you will? Perhaps some of this could be media hype and maybe our SW has been told to pass on this information I really don't know.

My precious

I think you are referring to concurrent planning, not long term fostering, very different. There is no view of proceeding to adoption with long term fostering.

From everything I and my new friends through adoption process have been told, there are many adopters being considered for each child, I don't think that's hype. Fostering to adopt is the new push I think (so much better for the children, so you can see why) but there are less people willing to do this. We were told that those children under fostering to adopt were highly likely to be adopted but that risk that they may not puts people off, therefore you would maybe be in a better place/ better chance of getting a match because essentially you would be 'competing' against fewer adopters.
But at the end of the day if you feel it's not for you, it's simply not, I know I personally couldn't do it.

Sorry, and when I say 'been told' I mean we have friends who are waiting longer than us and SW told them each time there is a potential match they are being considered against around another 5 adopters/adopting couples. Not 40, but the age being sought for our friends is 2-5, maybe under 2's would mean a lot more?!?!?

There is really a lot of competition for available children!

We have shown interest in many different children, some with significant needs, and all of the children have had a huge amount of interest.
We are approved for 1 child under 5 and are finding it incredible difficult to even get a PAR sometimes.
We have also had 2 possible links fall through due to the children foster carer stepping forward at the last minute and applying to adopt the child.

We have been approved for 7 months and never thought we'd be finding it this difficult to get a match! We were told there were lots of children available during our prep - but just before we were approved everything changed!

*opps I ment 'difficult to get hold of a CPR'

There's always a lot of competition for single babies and young children, especially those who are supposedly NT or who have minor SN.

Yes, some families will get lucky and get matched quickly , especially if they have some extra factor that helps in matching eg they are an unusual religious or ethnic match , have the right connections with social services, etc .

We were always looking for 2 older sibling boys, for the very reason that they were harder to place. We have a link and hopefully matched on Monday but our LA had no children when we were approved so had to wait 3 months to go nationally and even then very few options.

Foster 2 adopt and concurrency are slightly different and most agencies are Probably only doing one if them.

I wouldn't have thought there are 40 adopters being put forward each time even for babies. Babies with no additional needs are very easy to match and therefore usually matched with the la's own adopters - I Couldn't imagine any have that many adopters waiting for babies!!