Bedrooms on different floors.

[Hotwaterbottlelove]

We are looking at houses and just wanted to check if there are any rules about the children's bedrooms being on different floors to the parents. Most of the houses we are looking at, we would be on the top floor with the children on the next one down. We are considering 2+ in terms of age.

Is that okay?

We are foster carers and adoptors and that is not allowed for foster children but not sure about adoption because it wasnt a problem we had so never asked the question. . They may well have an issue with it on the grounds of safety and /or the child feeling isolated when vulnerable at night. There are however exceptions for disability needs if for example you need a downstairs bedroom for a wheelchair user ( in fact we have our foster child downstairs because of that very reason but we have a cctv link and monitor him all night that way ).
To be honest I would avoid houses with that set up .
Sorry !

That's really helpful insight, thank you. I'm wondering how much n earth it would work if people adopt three or more children though as very few houses have all the bedrooms on one level.

We do that, but with a 10 and 13 year old. Prob wouldn't do it under 5.

I think it is generally new build townhouses that have bedrooms across 2 floors. If you widen your search to include (less attractive) older semi-detached houses with 3 bedroooms, you are likely to find most, if not all, have the bedrooms on the same floor.

@Hotwaterbottlelove
Don't forget once the adoption order is granted you can then allocate bedrooms however you wish though I still think some young children would struggle if they were on a different floor to their parents.

Thanks all. It's tricky. The only other suitable houses in our area that have three bedrooms on one floor all have two doubles and a single. I just assumed the it would be discouraged to have one child in a significantly smaller room than the other. Due to feelings of one being favoured? Perhaps not?

If we thought we could squeeze a double into the smallest room we would do it that at least Wayne until they were older but the ones we have viewed just wouldn't take it.

My best friend is a floor above her 2 and 4 year old and she admits it is hard at night but they had no other choice.

Until not Wayne

I've got a town house and slept in the master bedroom on the top floor until my son was placed when I moved down to be on the same floor as him. I wasn't told I had to but made it clear from the outset that was my intention and the social worker nodded approvingly. I did spend a couple of nights up there with a baby monitor when he was still in a cot, just for a change of scenery, but if he woke in the night I'd obviously have to manage the stairs in my half sleepy state and it just wasn't worth it. Honestly 3 storey houses seem like a nice idea but the reality of searching for a mislaid phone or toy over three floors, with a toddler demanding your attention, is exhausting. If I had my time again I would go for something over two floors. DS is nearly 5 now and the master bedroom is still a spare room, and increasingly toy storage/play room. I can't see me moving back any time soon.

Our oldest is downstairs, younger 2 are upstairs where our bedroom is. Oldest was nearly 7 when she came home, if she had been younger we would have had 2 share for a while.

One of the first questions we were asked was this and it was made clear it was a big no no with our agency.

In terms of room size, our agency requires enough space in the bedroom that they can play with toys in there which is possible with a single one, especially as you can beds of all different sizes with built in storage.

We adopted a 1.5 and 3 year old two years ago and they both sleep in the middle floor, while we sleep in the top floor. This was never highlighted to us as a problem by social workers.

@ifchocolatewerecelery interesting, would you be comfortable telling me which agency that was? I called one at random today to ask and they said that their only set rule was a bedroom for each child and anything else would be on a case by case basis. I suppose they all operate in their own way

@JohnPA do you ever find it a challenge to be separated from them at night?

It was one of the Welsh ones. Sometimes though SWs say stuff like this because of their beliefs and sometimes it's because they are aware of the attitudes that certain members of the approval panel about specific issues.

Dogs are another controversial issue and you'll see lots of different ideas about acceptable risk assessments for them. We had to 'promise' a variety of things for ours including fencing off an area of the garden that the child's SW never expected us to do because of one particular person at matching

We live in a terrace in London. When our eldest was placed, he was on the half floor above us; when our youngest was placed he was on the half floor below us.
Never raised an issue - but then all bedrooms are on different floors in our house.

They have always found us in the night - used a monitor at the beginning but they always toddled through to us in the night (and still do) over six years on...

This will be an issue depending on agency, in my local authority and the surrounding one it wouldn’t be ok, the expectation being that parents sleep on the same floor. There’s no issue with differently sized rooms - my DDs room is smaller than her brothers and we’ll need to reconfigure the house when she’s older so she has more space.

The other thing is, if you adopted siblings my local authority would be ok with them sharing a room so there’s no one size fits all, just what your assessing agency want. Just be aware that if your going through a voluntary agency, you might find when it comes to matching that the local authority have their own considerations to think about. Given that I’d go for the most commonly accepted home set up possible.

We have two bedrooms on each floor. SW talked to us in the beginning about the DC sharing a room so they could both be on the same floor as us.

For most agencies, sharing would be a no no.

Our LO was 7 months when he came home. We had a loft conversion done during the approval process, and our bedroom was always going to be the loft room and one of the other (middle floor) rooms our sons. It was never bought up or an issue.
He's almost 3 now, and we have a baby monitor (I think I probably will until he's 16!!!) but to get to him takes maybe 2 seconds more than if we were in the bedroom next door.