New to adoption board

[CraftyGin]

Dear All,

We have been foster caring a delightful 6 year old girl for the last year. Her adoption order came through a few weeks ago, and we met the adoption social worker for the first time yesterday.

Our little girl is fine with adoption. She is very well regulated and is looking forward to moving to her forever family, although she never says much about it apart from getting a bicycle! Her biggest loss will be moving schools.

So, we are on a new conveyer belt! Panel is early November and we need to have a chance meeting with the new mum beforehand (we are thinking Sunday lunch with my older kids). Once Panel has decided we will have lots of transition. New mum wants us to remain as part of the extended family (eg 'grandparents'), and we are happy to do this as we are very fond of the little girl. She lives two hours away, any meetings are limited to once or twice a year.

I am open to any help from those of you on 'the other side', and to tell me how we can support our FC to make the transition the smoothest.

Hi @CraftyGin

You sound like lovely and supportive carers.
I would just say be led by the child.
I do disagree a bit when you say her biggest loss will be school. Of course that will be hard, but I'd say the biggest loss will be you.

She may well be excited by the idea of her new home and a new bike, but at the moment it's a bit abstract and without the realisation of what she is losing.

My son moved to me when he was 8. He very quickly stopped talking about school. We are 11 years down the line, he is a strapping 19 year old. He still talks about his foster family.
Good luck with the move

Hi @CraftyGin you sound lovely. I agree with @Ted27 after a year of living with you, her biggest loss will be you. My DD came to us age 6 and seemed to be all excited about the move however, she was desperately masking her feelings - she was scared and uncertain and anxious but went about her day smiling and laughing and talking about it as if it were a big adventure.

Please don't downplay how much of a challenge this will be for her, even if she looks like she'd doing ok. Talk to her about the transition, give her permission to feel sad or angry or anxious - if everyone around her is saying how wonderful it is that she's going to her forever family it can be very difficult for her then to show how she actually feels about it. The bike etc will be a distraction but for her own sake she needs to be able to express negative feelings about such a big transition - it'll hard for you as her foster carer to see her upset but she needs to be able to mourn all of the losses that come with transition, not just celebrate the good bits.

I'd also suggest that during transitions you keep the house quiet, no visitors or family members popping by, just whoever would usually be in the house and her new parents. Our children's foster carers house was very busy, and they didn't reduce that in any way during transitions which meant we were constantly dealing with adult children, grandchildren, cousins etc appearing which made it very difficult for our children to just spend time getting to know us.

It's great that you want to make transitions as smooth as possible, I wish you lots of luck.

My children were 5 and 6 at placement. The fc was very experienced and prepared them really well. She went through our welcome book with them many times and they watched our dvd daily, so the children could ask questions and become familiar with our faces and voices. We had send some London children's books and she read those with the kids and made them excited for moving to London. She always made them feel loved, but also gave them permission to go and gave all of us just the right amount of support and space.

From our first meeting, when the children asked her permission about something, she would always say "Oh, you will have to ask Mummy and Daddy about that." She only send them with clothes that had some room and a small number of toys, very few books. So she gave them enough to hold on to, but didn't drown them in the past. She gave each a photo album about their time at hers, which was helpful. We used it for our children to tell us about their life at the foster carer's. She also gave them a memory box each with their first ballet shoes, some sightseeing mugs from holidays, cards and so on.

The foster carer also gave us some pointers. For instance, one day during intros one of my daughters tried to gain control and since we did not know her, we went along with a few things. In the evening I talked it over with the foster carer and she said: "You have been had!". That was helpful. She always made it clear that I could contact her any time with questions and I did at one point a few months later.

The foster carer took a family picture at our very first meeting and I am very grateful for that. Both my husband and I would have forgotten due to the excitement, but of course it is a very meaningful picture for all of us.

My children didn't mourn their school for long, but did mourn the loss of their foster carers for quite some time. We are still in touch. They are wonderful people and I am eternally grateful to them.

Thank you for these messages. I am really grateful.

We are meeting the prospective mum on Teams tomorrow, but all the signals are that she will be great.

It really helpful for the feedback not to be super-positive about everything. This little girl is very empathetic and will say what she wants people to hear, so it is a good reminder to give her space to say if she is not happy about something.

She gets frustrated when people ask her if there is anything she is worried about, and says no there isn't anything.

We've been bad with memory books. I did go out to Hobbycraft a year ago to buy all the bits and pieces but never did anything because I wanted it to be perfect. Now that my creative daughter is back home from uni, I will get her on the case. We have taken lots of pictures so have the material.

She came to us with nothing (not even a toothbrush) and now has loads of clothes, toys and books. When prospective mum comes to us, they can choose together what they want to take. We are dropping out of fostering, so they are free to take what they want.

Interesting all of you have fostered children older than 5. Our Cafcass officer said that no-one wanted 6 or 7 year olds, so she would be in long-term fostering. We said we would keep her until she went to her final placement (I didn't want her in 10 foster homes by the age of 16), but at age 60, it wouldn't be fair on her. We will be happy to be "nana and papa".

She is a brilliant candidate - no obvious MH needs, attachment disorders or health care needs. She goes to school, sleeps well at night and does all her self-care. It means that the future family can continue careers etc.

I used to teach in a SEN school and children that were adopted as babies often had severe issues. I can't see this being something that our little girl will be like.

@CraftyGin

yes sadly I do think that there is less ‘demand’ for want of a better word for the older children. They do tend to wait longer for their adoptive families.

Whilst I do have pangs of emotion about missing so much of his early life, I have no regrets about adopting an 8 year old. He was the right child.
I am feeling it very hard at the moment as he is off to university on Saturday and I don’t feel like I’ve had enough time with him.

Meanwhile at the age of 58 I now have a 12 year old foster child with me.