Overnight guests

[Fairynewbie]

Hi we are currently waiting for a match which hopefully wont be too long now
Question for those who have a child on adoption placement.i have read can take months and months get a court order. Are you allowed have the odd overnight guests stay over. I am thinking once lockdown is totally over have family who I haven't seen for months who live miles away come stay over.

Close family and friends - for short periods of time, I think fine!!

We did have after a few months. It needed some prep. Our son was 3 at the time he was placed. His sleep was a bit all over the place too and having guests made that v stressful for us all. But we did do it and it was fine.

Hi 2mums1son, that's good to hear. Did you need social workers permission as not sure what will be on adoption placement plan until we get a match. There is one in the pipeline x

I wouldn’t think you’d need permission but I would wait to see what your little one is able to tolerate. It was a good 6 months before my two could cope with being away overnight with me and DH, and about that again before they could tolerate someone staying overnight here. After the disruption in moving in here they just needed their home to be their home for a while.

Thanks jellycatpyjamas, I know we will only have a certain amount of PR shared with parents and social workers. So I just wondered how much we can do without permission. I agree with you any overnight will be once the child feels comfortable

The way it works is you share parental rights equally with birth parents and the local authority - so you have full parental rights needed to parent your child but work in conjunction with the local authority (in reality working within the parameters of their fostering policy) and the local authority in turn work in conjunction with the birth parents. So I’m practice you can make day to day decisions about what happens in her life including who you have around the house - with the normal caveats around supervision etc. Most of the local authorities I work with take a fairly pragmatic view when the child is being placed permanently. It’s worth just checking with your social worker about the level of consultation or supervision they expect to have post placement - when my two were placed we changed their surname immediately with school, GP etc and took all decisions re health care etc and had they been able to cope we would have been able to have close family stay over.

Hi jellycatpyjamas, as I understand our local authority restrict the degree to which the prospective adopters can exercise their parental responsibility; my friends can't go away for more than a weekend or even choose which school child attends without social worker approval. So will be interesting to see what level when we finally get through matching x

Some local authorities hold on more tightly than others so best to check. For my part I was told 2 weeks before summer holidays that my two were being placed and I needed to find a school for them - cue very panicked phone calls and visits, luckily I found a school that’s perfect for them but I had no input in terms of decision making. We did have a lot of support post placement but that was around emotional support for me and my DH rather than decision making for the kids and I think that was the right balance. It may also depend on the legal stays of your little one, my two were already freed for adoption so the birth parents rights had been removed, which might have helped the LA step back from the practical bits.

You need to be able to find your feet as parents, so need to be able to actually do the parenting and decision making. Hopefully they’ll be hands off and supportive. Best of luck, when’s your matching panel?

Yes you can have over night guests, but whether or not your child is suited to them is a whole different matter. Some cope brilliantly, others like my son, not so much. We couldn’t have anyone over night (or even in our home for a significant amount of time) for the first 12-14ish months.

Well you'll probably be funnelling - so limiting time you spend with others. Which might rule out overnight guests.

Some time ago 2 birth children at Uni AD arrived beginning of December age 5 months. Son and daughter arrived home with 2 friends for Christmas holidays .
SW's aware, no problem but it was in the good old days! AD loved all the attention ! Good luck.