Sibling Assessments

[Runner31]

Hi,
Our story continues to be filled with bumps but our new little family is doing great when we are left to establish our new normal life.
I was wondering if anyone could give me any information on the new sibling assessments in Scotland? Our LO is currently undergoing one with his little sister both of whom are early primary school age. They have an observation by CAMHS and social work soon and I wondered what sort of things they will be looking for. Our LO is placed with us for adoption and she is in foster care.

The new Act places a duty on local authorities to preserve sibling relationships unless there’s a risk to either child, ideally by placing them together but maintaining meaningful contact if not.

I imagine the assessment will be trying to look at their previous and current relationship, levels of contact up til now, how that contact has been for them both and will seek to ascertain their views about ongoing contact. The sw undertaking the assessment should explain it fully to you before beginning - what have you been told thus far?

Only that CAMHS will do an observation next week and that after the siblings are assessed we will then be assessed as a family. As a new parent I feel a bit anxious handing our LO over for an observation/assessment that we don't know much about. He doesn't have a strong relationship with his SW and it will only be her and the psychologist at the park with them. He's gone from being excited about the contact with his sister to nervous because we're not there with him and the people who are going, don't normally support him with stuff. We've been to sibling contact before and all had a lovely time so he's pretty disappointed but we've been told not to tell him what the point of this contact is.

That’s a nonsense, he’s not that long placed with you and if he’s anxious about being there on his own they won’t get a proper sense of him to assess. Are they assessing whether they can be both placed together? Is that even something you’d consider?

SW hadn't considered whether they could be placed together so we raised it which started their assessment ball rolling so to speak. We were approved to adopt siblings and initially wanted to and were in fact asked twice if we would consider adopting her with our LO (and said yes) but they were never assessed so we thought no more of it till we met her at a contact. We know the background so are happy too but if it's decided it's not in their best interests then we taccept that. We just felt somebody needed to look into it before they both ended up in differnet families. We'll be over the moon if we can adopt her as well and I hope for our LO it works out. They adore each other even though they've been in seperate foster families.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you - hopefully the assessment will go well for you.