Wondering about what happens/how

[Somuddled]

There are a few related things I'm wondering about that maybe social workers of foster parents might be better placed to answer but thought I'd try here first.

What is it/how is it decided that a child is no longer up for adoption but instead will be in long term fostering? Age? Time waiting?

Can children that have been placed for long term fostering be adopted if the right parents come forward?

Very occasionally you see a child's profile in a public place - presumably because they are running out of time to be adopted? Or are there other reasons to 'forgo' the child's privacy?

I have known long term foster carers to adopt a child in their care, so it can happen.

In terms of making the switch from adoption to long term fostering, it may happen if family finding hasn’t been successful over a period of time and the child needs more permanence than the short term foster placement they may be in. I think it’s very hard to say what factors would he considered because every case is so individual to the child and the circumstances that brought them into care.

Lots of reasons. Sometimes long-term fostering might be best for the child to enable them to keep some regular contact with members of the birth family who are important to the child. But it's going to be extraordinarily complex for each individual situation, so it will be balancing all the different factors and it may well be a changing picture as the child's needs change too.

I have been told (by a social worker) that some children aren't suitable for adoption and stay in long term fostering because the children are too old to 'reinvent' themselves as a child of another family.
Eg they would always want to return to their birth parents (no matter the circumstances of their removal) and so can't be considered for adoption.
I don't think every child thinks like this and some older children are really interested in being adopted, I guess that depends on how much they see their birth family and how close they feel to them.

Some children are in sibling groups and have been assessed that it's more important to keep them together in foster than it is to have to split them up to adopt them (sibling groups are harder to find adoptive parents for).

I also guess that children with severe disabilities are much hard to match with adoptive parents.

As others have said, it can vary hugely. Some children are going to need ongoing support from services which can be best provided in a fostering placement - the local authority retain parental responsibility for the child and therefore have a duty of care that isn’t the case in adoption.

Some older children would struggle to settle in an adoptive placement, and it’s hard to find adopters first children really older than 6/7. Some children have very complex needs by that point. Permanent foster care is a way of securing the child’s medium to long term future meaning they can settle somewhere without the potential disruption that family finding and adoption brings.

In some cases it’s the best choice, in others it’s the best of a very limited number of options.