Adoption when birth child has SEND

[SquidleyDidley]

Our child is 5 and has a variety of additional needs and medical issues: all of which we are now in a good place with in terms of managing them and the future etc.

We had always planned to adopt (I have personal experience through my family and through paid and voluntary work) but when our son was born with medical issues we thought it would not be practical. But our opinions on this are changing.

Has anyone adopted/long term foster* when they have birth children with additional needs? I read a lot of the negative affects of adopting children with SEND on birth children, but I can’t really find much from the perspective of those whose birth children are SEND themselves. Thank you :)

(* I only mention LTF as the agency we were looking to use a few years ago said that many of their children who weren’t in the F2A/Concurrency were listed as LTF in order to provide support for longer in advance of the adoption going through, especially those children with undiagnosed conditions etc).

It wouldn't rule you out but you do need to think if the adopted child also had additional needs how would you cope. Could you manage both children, how would it work financially, would you/do you work, could you afford to give up if you had to due to having 2 children with additional needs? Depending on their age/ability does your birth child understand what adoption is and how they feel about the idea. Of course I'm not asking you to answer these questions but it's a starting point to think about. Contact a few agencies and question them and see what they saym

Yes we have a son with Aspergers who is now an adult . When he was 11 or so we went into fostering and we have a long term foster child with complex needs and have since adopted another child with extremely complex medical needs and severe disabilities. I have always been at home as a full time carer and no way could I have gone out to work as well. Not that I am exactly sedentary. I have never worked harder and it is round the clock with v little respite or time to ourselves.

So you need to think about what type of placement would be suitable and accept that most adopted or indeed foster children come with some sort of additional challenges due to trauma etc . Do lots of research is my advice and think long and hard about how your child will cope with it all. We did that and showed the agency that we has really thought it through and our son has coped really well with it all and the 2 boys have really enriched our whole family . Though it has had it's fair share of challenges we wouldn't change it . If you want any more help ot advice feel free to get in touch. Good luck x

Thanks for your reply. Financial and practical issues aren’t a concern considering the changes we have already made since having our child. It’s more the fact that we would need to balance the needs of our existing child with those of an adopted child. I just wondered if anyone had experienced that, and how that can impact on matching etc. Also in terms of the support provided to the existing child (e.g. social stories etc) and if that would be something we would have to source ourselves or if it’s provided/facilitated.

I also wondered how matching children with different needs is handled, e.g. open days, bump in meetings etc.

It largely depends on your childs needs tbh. If you are dealing with severe autism and violent and challenging behaviour then that is obviously going to be a potential issue to any social worker placing a child but if your child has medical needs or issues that are under control and stable that is different again. Only you know how much your childs issues impact every day life and whether they would fit in with another child who also may have extra needs. Without knowing your specific circumstances it is hard to say more and I am not asking you to share it on a public forum hence my generic advice above.
Have you discussed this with a few local authorities or agencies who may well be able to offer more constructive advice.
I think matching would have to be handled carefully to ensure a good fit and one thing fostering taught me was that our youngest birth child was too young at 4 and if I had my time again I would have waited until she was older. So as I said we would still do.it all again but with that one change. And to be honest there is zero support for birth children on the whole . The soc workers are only really interested in the child they want to place and any support for your existing children will be down to you.

I think you need to accept that any child you adopt will have some kind of additional needs/trauma.
My ds was told to us as having no additional needs. He has spd, attachment issues and fasd.
I don't mean to be negative or put you off! Wishing you lots of luck

@flapjackfairy thank you very much, I appreciate the honesty. It’s very useful things to consider, and it’s definitely a long term thing: so I think realistically he would be 7 with the process etc, although maybe even that is too young and we need more time. We are in a few specific SEND family groups but I think it might be helpful to expand our connections and see how our child responds to children who have very different needs/behaviours. I’m not surprised that the support is absent as there hasn’t been any for us at all other than charities and peer support, although we have been able to find some privately so that’s definitely an added cost to consider. Thank you, your comments are very helpful.

@Scarfonthestairs not a problem at all, i don’t expect any other. In my family/work experience of adoption/LAC i would be surprised if there was any child who went through the system without any sort of additional need/trauma/attachment.

We have adopted (and fostered) after having a birth child with a chromosome deletion.
When we first started out we felt that our experiences with our birth daughter gave us lots of strengths to parent traumatised children. And it does. However, nothing we have ever gone through with our SEN birth daughter (apart from initial diagnosis) has been as challenging and often frustrating as it is to parent our adopted children. There are of course many, many positives and moments of tremendous pride but as many will say it is exhausting.
When we went to matching panel our birth daughter was mentioned as one of our great strengths given that she was proof we could parent outside of the ‘normal’ box. I will say though as she has aged her needs have become more demanding in the same way as our adopted children age they go through different behavioural challenges and we often find a clash of need. I can’t deny that it is incredibly hard work. On a good day we would definitely say we would do it all again. Bad days are not as few and far between as I would hope for though.

@Cheesecakeandwine thank you for sharing your experiences. I think it’s the clash of needs that’s my biggest concern and something that we definitely need to put more consideration in to. Not just emotionally, but practically: our walls are thin and the two bedrooms we have are next to each other, but actually maybe a move around would be better to try and reduce possible noise for our child who has some major sensory issues with noise. Also it maybe better for us to have as big an age gap as possible so that each child will have their own outlets/interests and can limit the amount of “cross over” they have. I’m an only child and I’ve always felt sorry for some siblings who are sometimes forced to do the same things wether they like it or not!