Early Permanence child info'

[gotasweaton]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice re EP please. We have been in talks about several EP children recently - all have fallen through though due to court decisions. When we are given the info, its a very basic profile and we say yes or no. As the proceedings can be very quick before they arrive with you - at what point are you given the detailed info? At training we were advised to ask as much as possible, but what if you agree and then you find out about issue you may not be able to support in the long term? I understand for newborns you may be limited, but we have been approached for approx. 18month old children and are expected to give a yes or no with no history of pregnancy/birth. Also our SW told us to not bother with EP and carry on looking at linkmaker as the court keep ruling in favour of parents, even though SWs have completed parental assessments and they are deemed negative due to high risk. My DH and me are very confused as we assumed when approved 6 months ago that an EP placement would happen quite quickly. We are happy to go for adoption but there are no children in our age range via our adoption area on linkmaker yet we've been told its not advisable to go out of our region. If anyone would be able to share their experiences I would really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to read.

After 6 months the local authority really must let you go nationally on Linkmaker, in most cases they do that after 3 months so I think they’re being unfair to you. I’d also suggest that placing an 18 month old isn’t in the spirit of early permanence, which usually about babies where permanence is the most likely outcome.

In any event, you should be given the fullest information possible before making a decision about placing a child with you - I’d expect information about the pregnancy, any neonatal trauma or substance misuse as it’s all part of the picture and should inform your decision making. Your social worker should have that information readily available because it’ll form part of the case for adoption.

I’d also suggest their assessments aren’t thorough enough if they’re repeatedly presenting children for early permanence but not getting the court decision in their favour.

I suspect the agency are saying it’s not advisable to go out of region because, having gone to the expense of assessing and approving you, they want you as a resource for their children. There’s really no issue about going out of region, it can make the process a bit trickier in terms of coordinating professionals meetings etc but there’s no disadvantage to you.

In your shoes I’d meet with your social worker and their manager to agree a way forward from here, with at very least an agreement to go on the national register via Linkmaker. If you do get presented with another child for EP, push for as much information as possible. It’s much harder once a child is placed to disrupt because of unknown issues which come to light, your social worker knows this.

We did EP and when we were approached with a potential match our SW came and gave us a brief overview of the baby/ birth parent history including pregnancy info and said if we were happy then the babies social worker would come the following day and give us more detailed info. If we were happy with that baby would be brought round later that day. And that was it, baby moved in that evening.

We were joint approved for EP and adoption, only one F2A placement was discussed with us, like you, it was for a toddler. The placement had broken down and they wanted to minimise moves. We didn’t go ahead due to the uncertainty and age being similar to adoptive placements and as we figured if a FC cannot cope we’ve got no chance!

My understanding from our SW was that they can only discuss the details with you, nothing is in writing and they will tell you as much as they know. I’m not sure what information you are expecting? Our peers who are doing F2A at the mo had pretty much Mumtolittlesausage’s experience.

Sorry to add, I don’t believe EP placements are offered out of your region because of the challenges for regular contact, and it would be difficult to do frequent visits if you live far away. Adoption however, you can look further afield. We also waited 6 months and I found this wait very disheartening and difficult. It depends a lot on your criteria and what needs you think you can meet of the child, at 4 months we reviewed our criteria and we did a lot of looking ourselves on LM at a wider range of profiles, and we discussed a family finding plan with our SW and reviewed monthly.