Moving house with adopted child

[user1479136681]

Please can you tell me your experiences of moving house with your children?

A little background is that we have only had our 17-month-old son placed with us for 5 months... obviously we weren't planning on moving house, but my wife was made redundant due to Covid and she is the main earner. (We initially discussed the option of me going back to work, but money would be so tight on my salary alone and now my company has announced plans to make likely 50% of us redundant). She's been job searching for months and has finally had a job offer - but it's in a different county 2.5 hours away.

Pros are that her family are all based in this city, so we could live near them. She would receive a nice salary increase which would mean I could be a SAHM instead of going back to work. She will be working from home first so we won't have to move straight away, probably in 6-8 months.

Cons are that even for allowing 6-8 month delay, we will only just be coming up to a year of placement and moving will be a lot of upheaval for our son. He would be turning 2-years-old and due to be starting nursery around that time, so we'd probably have to delay that. He has already made friends with one of our friend's daughters so he would miss her. We have also been seeing the foster carers pretty regularly, and moving away from them would be difficult too (of course we would still put the effort in to visit). Also he would be moving away from his place of birth and it might damage early permanence.

We have spoken to our social worker who said it would be fine and not affect the AO and she understands it wasn't our plan, but that being near family would be a positive thing. Maybe I am worrying too much?? But I am really worried! If it was just us to consider, I would be jumping for joy as it's a lovely area of the country. There's great access to the coast and the Lake District and it's a much nicer city than the scabby town where we currently live.

Thanks for reading my rambling! It's hard because I feel that, financially, we don't have a lot of choice. We just want to do the best thing for our new son :(

We moved our two siblings a year into placement (3&4 at the time). Not ideal by any stretch - but it did work out well for us and turned out to be the right decision.

We never intended to move, but we had some extra funds, our old house wasn’t working for us and eldest was due to start school in a few months...so it was a now or never. My two were older than yours though and we already had the AO in place.

We told lots and lots of stories about the house we were moving too, we showed them pictures of their new bedrooms, we did drive-bys and visits to the new house. We visited local attractions and explored the new area. They helped us to pack books and their own toys, and it was very important for them to check the old house to ensure we hadn’t forgotten anything. They were quite worried we would forget something. On moving day, the kids were with their grandparents and we set their rooms up first in the new house.

We also only moved 30 mins away - so maybe not so similar to your conundrum, but life throws curve balls occasionally and if moving makes financial and logical sense then you will be doing the right thing for your family. If you have 6-8 months to plan for it, then this will also help.

It sounds like a no brainer to me. You can use these next 6 to 8 months as preparation time, and to get your new home sorted out so there aren't any temporary moves.
It sounds like it would be a really good move so look to the longer term Good luck

Agree with @Ted27 after all just think about what the alternatives would be, especially if she needed to commute regularly.

You'd just need to do some checking around the issues of which LA has responsibility for your LO and when that would change in case you need to access post adoption support at some point.

Thanks for your replies, this has put me somewhat at rest! We've been told our current LA would support us for 2 years and then switch to the current LA. I'm really worried about the Adoption order.

Why are you worried about the adoption order?

Legally you stay the resonsibility of the original LA for three years after the adoption order, then you would transfer to the new one

Well I recently read a story/legal ad (can't remember) in Adoption UK about a couple who were refused the AO because the LA felt they couldn't meet the child's needs. Our SW says it'll be fine so I know I'm probably being irrational! But I think could removing him from his home county count as not meeting his needs? But also we need money to meet his needs for housing and food lol!

we moved house about a year after placement. It wasn't ideal as we ended up having to move in with my MIL and FIL for a month because essentially the buyers we had were definitely people you would post about on AIBU.

It ended up being perfect - we are in a much bigger house, closer to my partner's family. We will never move again - as it was hell but that had nothing to do with having an adopted child. Our child has never minded sleeping anywhere and has always been pretty flexible in that respect. He's having a great time because now he has a 28m2 dedicated playroom....!

many children are placed out of county, my son being one of them. Its not a problem so really no need to worry on that count.
Although its not what you planned, your move looks like it will put your family in a much better place - your SW is happy. I'd focus on making sure that the move happens in the least disruptive way for your child