Changing from traditional adoption to FFA after approval

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We had the call last night we've been waiting for from our SW to say they have identified a match, we were sent the CPR and she is perfect however the current foster carer is due to go into hospital at the end of April and won't be returning to foster care for some time. Because of this they want to change our PAR so we are also approved for FFA and the little one will come to us in 4 weeks under FFA instead of traditional adoption rather than move her to another placement for a couple of months and then to us.

We initially decided against FFA so I don't know too many details on how it works, especially when a placement order is already in place. Our SW is at panel today so not available until later, we have a meeting with little ones SW tomorrow and my mind has gone completely blank on what I should ask!

DH was asleep and snoring within seconds last night happy that we've finally found our little one whereas I was awake half the night stressing about the practicalities of having 4 weeks to get everything ready for a toddler joining our lives. Also worrying about how I tell my manager as they were expecting 2/3 months notice to get an interim replacement in for me and now they may have 2/3 weeks which I know won't go down very well.

Any tips would be much appreciated

We had a similar scenario and we actually didn't go ahead in the end for reasons that are not linked to FFA status. For us the concerns about the FFA were that we were told the children who were 3 and 6 at the time would have to call us by our first names and that he wouldn't be allowed to come into our bedroom when we were in bed etc. That may not actually be the case for FFA but they were at pains to point out that we would have to treat the children as a foster placement initially and we felt with children of this age that could make transition difficult. Good Luck!

2mums1son we had similar concerns with FFA as well which is partly why we decided not to go for it initially.

We had a call from our SW earlier and the meeting has moved up to this afternoon as the FCs have actually resigned and the LA "misplaced" the resignation letter so now only have 2 weeks not 4!

Our other concern with the potential placement under FFA was contact, as the children were "older" This might not be something that does worry you but we felt FFA was likely to work better with very young children and would have been harder for the pair we were approached for. For them the placement had broken down with FC and so they wanted to move them on very quickly hence asking us to consider a FFA placement when we weren't approved for it. I know FFA can be amazing but it didn't feel like the right fit for these children with us.