Real experiences with FFA?

[Dominoodles]

Hi everyone! I'm a long time lurker but haven't posted before. After several years of infertility my DH and I have decided to instead pursue adoption. We've just entered Stage 2 and have all our meetings booked in, with a provisional panel date in November.

During our latest meeting, our SW asked if we were open to FFA. Initially we said no, as we couldn't handle the prospect of a child being removed once we'd formed an attachment to them. Our SW advised us to really think hard about it, because more than half of the children in the LA's care are up for FFA, not simply adoption. She's advised we're going to have a much tougher time if we are not at least open for FFA.

With this in mind, I would absolutely love if anyone would mind sharing their experience in FFA? How was the 'keeping in touch' visits? How did you find having to go by your names instead of Mum/Dad initially? If you had to deal with a child being removed and returned to their BF, how did you deal with that?

I want to be open to anything because I know needs can change drastically in adoption and I'd like to be flexible, but I'm still nervous about the idea!

Hi, I hope I can explain this so it makes sense! And I really hope I cause no offence, I'm very passionate about FFA but appreciate very much that people have hugely differing experiences, this is just mine - hopefully you will get a few different perspectives.

We understood FFA to be the best thing for, in our case, newborn babies. And as parents we knew we would do absolutely anything for our children, we would die for them. So, for us, FFA was simply "doing absolutely anything for our children if it was the best for them, no matter the pain to us as parents", it's just we were doing it before we really knew or loved them! It was a leap of faith!

Now, years on, I'm SO glad we did it, we have two that stayed with us, and one that didn't. We dont regret a second of it, we love our children more than anything. FFA means you take on the pain/risk so your child doesn't - once you love them, you can't imagine not doing it. It's just FFA asks you to do it before you love them!

But it is hard. Being referred to as the foster parent, seeing them leave for contact with birth family, the endless uncertainty. It is hard and you have to develop coping mechanisms. But the opportunity to care for your child from a very young age, and reduce the traumatic foster care changes is, in our opinion, so worth it.

I used to just eat a lot when they were in family contact time to stop my anxiety 🙃 and you do learn to live with the uncertainty, it becomes like background noise. When our second child went back to birth family it was excruciating, and very dark, for a while. But we still went back and did it again because we believe so strongly in how good it is for the child.

There is a lovely book called Fostering For Adoption by Alice Hill that you might find useful.

Anyway I hope my ramble is in some small way helpful - even if you completely disagree!! 🙂

@EPPadopter

Thank you for your comment!

We're not really after a newborn, we've put down 1-4 as that's the age range we have the most experience with/are comfortable with. We were under the impression that FFA was more for tiny babies and we could do direct adoption for a slightly older child, but apparently this isn't necessarily true.

If you don't mind me asking, how long were you fostering before being able to adopt? Our SW told us of cases that can go to 2-3 years due to court cases going on in the background.

Our SW also said there are some children who are up for FFA, but for whom there is already a placement order. Was this the case for any of yours?

Hi,

For the two children we adopted, they both came to us at birth (within a few days) and we got each of the Placement orders when they were 8/9 months (so that's when contact etc stops and you can apply to adopt) then by the time matching and adoption court order came they were about 14/16 months. We were told that was fairly quick, although it felt ages!! I think now it's more like a year before placement order.

I don't know about FFA after placement order, that doenst make sense to me! If there is a PO, why would you need FFA??