Foster to adopt practicalities

[rihanna4]

Can anybody share experience of any of these issues in the F2A context:

1. Managing contact without a car.
2. Managing contact if it goes on after you've had to return to work.
3. Managing contact when you are unwell or exhausted.

Thanks x

Hi @rihanna4

I haven't done FTA but I did adopt a child with direct contact arrangements, and currently foster a child who sees his dad once a month.

I don't drive.

With my son I just used public transport. With my current fosterling fortunately the contact centre is in walking distance. In exceptional circumstances I have heard about social workers collecting the child but I wouldn't rely on it.

If you are unwell and exhausted I'm afraid you just have to crack on with it, as you would any other parental task or responsibility. Unless, you were really incapacitated.
Contact for my son continued for years, we just arranged it for weekends or school holidays. My fosterling is always weekends.
Contact can be arranged for evenings, or you could use annual leave/flexible time.
Not always ideal but part of the process of problem solving as an adopter.
There will always be a way round it, but obviously depends on how frequently contact is required.
Good to start thinking about different scenarios now

@honeybee9871

I think I found the missed/cancelled meetings much more disruptive than the ones that took place. all the planning of your week and time around that appt and in my case my son was old enough to understand they were no shows.

@Ted27 @honeybee9871 Thank you both. I guess the worst case scenario (purely from a logistics perspective, I should add) would be contact several times a week. I watched a webinar today where the adoptive mum said she supported contact 4 days every week for 6 months. Whilst I understand the importance of contact, it's not ideal in terms of a LO having to spend so much time being ferried up and down, instead of at home or in the park etc

@rihanna4

I dont think its great from anyones point of view really.

From your perspective, if FTA is a route you want to go down, I think it would be a perfectly legitimate question to ask about logistical support when you are deciding on an agency.

I did FTA and although I do drive, I relied on lifts from friends/family as DD was very distressed after contact and needed someone (me!) to sit in the back with her. Do speak to SW’s as it’s something you’ll need to clarify.

In terms of contact going on after you go back to work, I haven’t heard of any locally going on longer than a year but I guess it’s possible.

When you are unwell/exhausted you just have to crack on. What’s even harder is when their/your baby is unwell and they still have to go when it’s clearly not in their best interests.

Its a hard road to travel but so worth it for early attachment/infant mental health in our experience.

We did f2a and had contact 3 mornings a week for 8 months. We don't drive but in London so used public transport. We had to nominate a back up carer in our immediate circle of support. In our case it was my bro and sister-in-law. They had a DBS check and references done by the agency. Had we been too ill at any point, then they would have had to step in and care for the baby including taking them to contact. (It is worth saying this arrangement had to be in extreme circumstances, and cleared by the local authority each time e.g. you can't use them as casual baby sitters.)
I have heard about contact going on for over a year in other F2A cases. You do get foster allowance which is some income once statutory adoption pay stops. This does vary from local authority to local authority, Your social worker will support you if things drag on and will put pressure on for an uplift or discretionary payment to ease the pressure, but it's also why agencies are keen on people having savings to fall back on.

Hi just to throw another view point/ possibility out there, we did f2a for 19
months and due to contact arrangements/ social worker visits/ health advisor visits etc, it was not possible for my husband to return to work when the adoption leave ended and had to take a significant amount of time off unpaid (and stretched the patience of his employer) we got a small allowance from the la, but it didn’t match what we were losing in husband going back to work.

x

Also to add, yes contact does dominate your week - pretty much if you aren't at contact, your small one is recovering from it - either hyped up and unable to settle, or completely zonko sleeping. Chuck in a couple of social workers visiting (1 for you, 1 for the child), the health visitor, the independent reporting officer and so on, and that's your week taken up. I found it pretty overwhelming and felt pretty sad that we couldn't take her to ordinary baby classes, rhyme time at the library, etc as there just wasn't time. We prioritised having our family visit after the first month as that kept us sane in the midst of everything. I also felt increasingly cross with the questions social workers asked about the activities we were doing with baby at the regular Looked After Child reviews. It was just impossible to fit anything else in.

Saying all this I wholly believe that contact is vital for little ones. They need to retain that connection with their birth parents as most F2A situations are cut and dried, so there is always the chance the court will rule for them to return to their family so the relationship needs to be there. We can tell our child that as a result of contact we got to know her birth family a bit, we can sincerely say we liked them and she can know that 4 adults were invested and supporting her at the start of her life

Thanks for all replies.

@Pollylong Any idea what would have happened if your husband were unable to extend his leave? I.e. if his employer had said no.

@Pollylong Does the long duration of your F2A placement mean that the decision to reunify vs adoption was a difficult one for the court? 19 months must have been rough going, despite your positive attitude and understanding.

Correction: should read aren't cut and dried!

I absolutely agree with the points that park sitting raises, my youngest came to me through F2A and I found it a very difficult experience. Due to very significant security concerns I wasn't allowed to take her to contact and instead contact workers came to the house to collect her and drop her back off, she had contact once a week, this was from newborn to 8 months. She found this hugely distressing and it has had ongoing ramifications for her, because I wasn't there and I never felt I had sufficient handovers this compounded the issues.

I attended 3 contact sessions a week for 3.5 years on foster to adopt. During the peak of this, the contact was up to 3 x 10 hour at home sessions a week. I dropped LO in the morning and collected them at night. So over the course of the week I was going from my house to birth family home 6 times. We did not live nesr one another. I ended up with a family and friend rota going as LO was so distressed on collection that I couldn't drive and needed to be with them in the back. As @Ted27 says there really isn't an option to be exausted or under the weather. You enter into an agreement and have a legal obligation to facilitate contact. You will be exausted. But you will also want to ensure you do all you can to support contact. I look back on it now and wonder how I did it. But I'm so glad I can tell LO I did everything I promised. As far as work goes, in my case the process was so long that I had to take extended carers leave from work. As contact slowly reduced I went back part time. The complicated logistics and the utter heartache of fta do not in any way cancel out it's worth. I would (and have) done it again and again. Wishing you well.

Hi, he would have had to quit his job, going back to work would not have worked, contact was three times a week and took up most the day, getting prepared in the morning, bag packed, dressed, fed, napped, getting there, and by the time they got home the days gone, then with all the external visits/meeting on top on the other days. I agree with above it was sad we could never get her into any baby classes as they clashed with contact, but contact comes first and can dominate your week. Bp’s turned up a good 90% of the time so contact was full on for the whole 19 months

judge reunified (she’s back now) so the length of f2a didn’t have much impact on the court decision.

i don’t want to paint a negative picture I’m very pro f2a and would do the last 3 yrs again but it’s hard work and you have to go into it for the right reasons.

contact can be hard, (for adopters and child, but coming from an adopter pov here) hard for adopters when the birth parents always turn up, its hard for adopters when child comes out sad and deregulated, it’s hard when they come out happy and have an amazing time because you worry you’ll lose them, it’s hard when birth parents never turn up and your sad for the story you will tell you child. It’s sad when bp don’t give the child anything at all, and it’s difficult when you come out of contact like it’s Christmas every day. And yes there are probably adopters out there that had no problems with contact, but on all the support groups I have been on it’s always been contact that has been the big discussion as the bit causing the stress , but all for different reasons and there’s no way to know until it happens what your contact story will be xx

@Pollylong Thanks for the detailed reply and sorry for your loss, if I understand correctly that the judge ordered that your child be reunified with its birth family. Very tough.

She was reunified after 19 months but only spent a few months with bp’s before she went back into care and is back with us now, currently in the process of sorting the adoption order, bit of a delay through as 3 judges off sick atm so they are rightly prioritising at risk cases, we will get their in the end tho 😀