Thank you and hello

[sunsetbeach123]

Hi not posted before but wanted to say thanks and hello and say the advise given on here has been a great help.

We were approved in Oct 15 for one child aged 4-6 and are still waiting to be matched. We have two birth children which I feel makes things a bit more complicated but maybe not. We have and a few links but foster carer and the other one birth family member decided to adopt (for the children thats a positive thing). We are now in reserve for 2 children and have just been linked again to another child.

We are in a few weeks attending our first exchange day so not sure what to expect.

Do you know if you felt you were a good match for a child and they were younger, by a year say, than what you were approved for you could still express interest and be considered?

I will update on how it all goes. It would be great to hear from others who are waiting to be matched and from those who already have their little one(s).

All advice is very much appreciated! Thanks again.

Hello and good luck with the link.

We were approved for 0-3 but did look at older, my friend was also approved for 0-5 and she's bringing a 7 year old home in a few weeks so I think they can be flexible with the ages :).

Hi.
You sound like you have had more interest than us. We got approved in November for a 0-3 year old and heard nothing as yet. We have an almost 7 year old birth child. I thought you could only adopt a child for the age you have been approved for. Obviously not.
Good luck with everything and hope you have a new family member home soon.

hello (and you're welcome)!

The age part of approval has been indicative rather than binding for nearly 10 years now - when I adopted DS it was cast in stone and meant a panel revisit if you want to go outside your age range (and age ranges where often quite narrow) but now its just a discussion with SW and possibly manager.

Hi
Just a quick update. Our social worker is happy with us looking at children slightly younger than we were approved for. In fact, she had already sent our PAR to the child in question social worker. She is also accompanying us to the exchange day.

We are definitely lucky with our social worker. Lets hope it continues that way. Its nice to know things are happening behind the scenes and you've not been forgotten. As you all know the waiting isn't easy.

With going out of age range, one thing to think about is why you went for that particular age range in the first place, and therefore what additional issues you might have going out of range.

e.g. 4 is or nearly is school age. 3 is not. 3 is more likely to still be in nappies as a LAC. Some issues only start being apparent with an older child, so age 3 could be considered 'more risky' than 4 (though I suspect this is negligible).

Our age range was wide 0-7 (but I was really expecting 3-6) and we still went outside of it as eldest was nearly 8. But she hadn't had the number of moves we were worried about with an older child and had in some ways more stability than many other younger children. Her sister was younger than we anticipated too, but they were the 'right' children for us.