Out of area adoption

[itsallabouttobegin]

We have been approved for 4 months and just had a potential match fall through. :( We are a mixed race couple hoping for 2 siblings under 3 and think that the match we had is the only one to have come up in our LA area (covers a number of LAs)since we were approved. Our social worker describes our criteria as quite specific.

I understand that the LAs priority is to find families for their children and get a 'return' on their investment in us. Our social worker also suggested out of area placements can be more difficult as the social workers do not know each other, information may not be accurate etc.

Does anybody have experience of out of area searches/placements? Should we be put off? We've now been given full access to Linkmaker and there are some children on there we'd be interested in finding out more about - but should we give our LA longer?

There's a lot more knowledgeable and experienced people on here but I just wanted to say that I live in a very small LA and when I first spoke to SW about adopting out with our area she was really encouraging and supportive. She said it's quite common for them to place children from a different LA. That might mean she has a good working relationship with other SW departments which will make a difference but she definitely sounded really positive about it and it isn't a barrier.

Many people adopt out of county, it really shouldn't be a problem. They just have to make a bit of an effort. If you have seen children on linkmaker, enquire.
LAs have a 'transfer fee' so don't feel you owe them anything
Good luck

Do they have a time scale that you are required to stay within the LA? As far as I remember when we were approved our LA requested that we stay with them for a year and then they would send our details out to other LAs. However the second time we were approved we were matched with a child from another LA almost immediately. The other LA approached our LA about us so I guess our details must have been available around the UK already.

We adopted through a charity so all the children we looked at could have been anywhere, as a mixed race couple we were inundated by profiles on linkmaker (although our criteria was broader 0-7). As it happens our elder two were 3 and 1 when they came to us. If say introductions are different at a distance (for example you couldn't take the kids to get them familiarised with their new home) and contact with foster carers is harder to maintain when there's a couple of hours of travel but it all worked out for us.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I think our LA only insist on you staying with them for the first 3 months.

It's good to know that the general view is positive. Feel a little more optimistic and in control being able to widen our search and have already drawn up a list of potential options for us :)

We adopted children from a different LA. The children's sw wanted to place them far away for safety reasons, so placing further away has advantages too.

Our children got to see our home before they moved in. We went to where they were and stayed there in a cottage for about a week. Then the fc came down to our's and stayed with them in a hotel for a night, so they could see their new home. Then they went back home, we all recovered for a day and then we went to pick them up. It all went very smoothly.

I can see the point about sw not knowing each other. However, they should have experience enough to ask the right questions. It is always a gamble. You are going for a risky age group anyway in terms of certainty about the children's future. They will be too little to predict much.

Most of our LO have been placed out of area. Biggest need think is having a good knowledge of support network in your area send , schools., Joined services., induction/transgression too NHS Services in both areas if their is a need, can LOCAL NHS facilitate child's medical need's however minor or major.

In 1 day we have had 4 expressions of interest from family finders :) One is for siblings in a neighbouring area which we have responded to and said we would like to find out more. What would you do about the others for now? Some are from the other end of the country - should we wait before responding?

We made ourselves be tight with our criteria (e.g. declined all single children as we were looking for a sibling group) we accepted cprs if we were both drawn to the children and let go of those where we weren't. After reading a couple of CPRs we withdrew from considering some children - sometimes info is wrong in the initial profile (e.g. ethnicity on some of ours was wrong and then wouldn't work or health needs were more complex than we felt we could manage). If I were you I'd consider what areas you are prepared to consider along with whatever other criteria you have and then decline all others with a polite message. Linkmaker can be overwhelming and it can feel awful to say no - I prepared a polite paragraph to send to family finders something about considering other matches and that we'd get back to them if things changed - hope this helps

We adopted out of area and actually it was an incredibly smooth process - linking and matching were by far the easiest part of the process in terms of getting things done. We were on linkmaker and our SW identified a number of profiles that met our matching criteria and after a bit more info we drciddd to move forward with a particular sibling pair. They moved in 5 months after we first saw their profile which given the distances involved and complexities of managing diaries etc was pretty quick.

Things that helped were arranging to be in area for a couple of days a doing all the meetings in that time, we had the linking meeting, met the foster carers, paediatrician and had the matching meeting across two days. It would usually happen over a longer timescale but we had various discussions which helped make it possible to do it all in a couple of days.

Intros were tricky in that we were away from home and our usual support network which was much harder than I anticipated. On the plus side the placing authority offered a fair bit of financial support because the DC were considered difficult to place, which my LA wouldn’t have offered.

It can work really well depending on the authorities and the individual workers. By the same token, I work for a large local authority in which many social workers wouldn’t necessarily know each other but it wouldn’t hinder then finding an appropriate placement for a child.

It is nice to give your LA the option to find someone, but remember it is your life, so don't be beholden to your LA.

I expressed interest in quite a few of my LA children, and heard four fifths of f.all back.

Hence, no compunction in using linkmaker now.

If my match goes ahead next week, it will be out of 'area' but actually only about 30 miles from my house.

Thanks all, we've now had 7 expressions of interest in 24 hours but only 2 of them are for siblings. I've handed over control of the responses to our social worker who despite her misgivings responded to the request for our PAR in 15 minutes :) I think you are right that we need to be quite tight on our criteria and we will for now also rule out children who are miles away.

I know our social worker will probably think we need some time to process the recent falling through of a match but I really don't think we do. We (mainly I) were upset last week and it was a blow but our dream is to become parents are we are pragmatic enough to realise that our children will be out there somewhere - we just need to find them.