So Many Children needing foster care could these be adopted?

[oasiswaterpool]

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/01/thousands-extra-foster-carers-needed-as-more-children-enter-care-fostering-network

Hm. They say 8300 new foster carers are needed.

Clearly, and luckily perhaps, the reduction in numbers of adoptions in the last year has not translated into fewer children being taken into care (nor was it meant to, I believe). So that would account for about 2500 of those additional foster carers needed - children who, in previous years, would have left care by being adopted; are now remaining in care; leaving LAs short of FC places.

Could (some of) these children be adopted? Well that is a complicated question! Just a couple of years ago, LAs obviously thought that they could and should be adopted, and the judges obviously ended up agreeing with them. But not so in the last year - for whatever reasons, fewer children were given adoption plans.

In any case, adoption is not the main result of being in care, and is only in a small minority of cases the preferable outcome. A (temporary?) lack of foster carers should NEVER be a swaying factor in making adoption decisions!

If there are not enough FC placements, then IMO a) new FCs must be recruited (perhaps by improving their 'work conditions'?), and/or b) work must be done to prevent children needing to be in care in the first place, e.g. more support provided to families. That is costly, but surely cheaper in the long term than taking children into care. (Caveat: I do fully understand that in some cases being in care truly is the best outcome, and no amount of support would change that.)

I don't think there are "more" children coming into care, I think there are more children going into longterm care - certainly where I live.

The reason for this is because the criteria for removing a child is now so much higher that a child who would have been removed at birth 5 years ago will now remain at home for years whilst social services "monitor" the family, maybe even send them to a Sure Start centre (ha!) for some support. No, hold on - the government closed them all down.

So the child who is eventually removed, maybe at 3 or 4, is then far more damaged than they could have been. Placements break down more easily because many FC are not trained to deal with more complex mental health issues. Child becomes more damaged. And older.

And by 5 they're often considered too old for adoption. Or too damaged.

My last 2 placements, both of whom should have been removed at birth, are now in long term care for the exact reasons outlined above.

And the problem goes on, more disturbed children, less fc's and mh services to help support them. Oh and higher case loads for sw's who have more admin tasks and no administrators to help, so less time to see the yp in the first place