Early permanence/foster to adopt experiences?

[Groundhoghcg]

Hi all, after a long journey of 7 miscarriages and now a struggle to conceive at all we have arrived at a decision to adopt.

We do my some miracle have one DS (nearly 5), she is desperate for a sibling but I do imagine the reality of sharing her parents after 5 years may come as a shock for her.

Our LA says of their early permanence placements (where you foster a very young child who is likely, but not guaranteed, to need to adopted) 97% end up with the fosterparents adopting. This is of course reassuring but I've been in the 1% with recurrent miscarriages and know if things don't go our way this won't be much of a comfort.

We want to go this route to reduce (some) of the trauma for the child and reduce the chances of the adoption breaking down. I know there are lots of unknowns.

Has anyone gone down this route and could you share your experience? The timescales for legal processes seem to vary wildly and it would be do helpful to hear how this went for others.

I think you may have been better to have posted this in "Fostering"

Or 'Adoption' which is under 'Becoming a Parent'.

I'm an adopter. In your situation I'd want to explore how your existing DC would cope with a baby potentially being returned.

No experience myself but my dh's colleague did it twice. Her first child was with them from 12 weeks old, younger one was a similar age I think.

Both boys have FAS

I know 2 families that have gone down the fostering to adopt route. Both fostered new born babies whom they adopted at about 6 months, then coincidentally, both have adopted the first child’s new born sibling. All children are now teens and are thriving.

Regarding your 5 yr old, I would explain to them that you’re helping to look after the new child as their mummy is finding it tricky. Until the adoption is confirmed I wouldnt talk about adoption as such to them.

We were planning to say pretty much what you said @Soontobe60, if we do go on to adopt we can then speak to DD about relationship changing from her special pal to a sibling.

How do I ask mumsnet hq to move this to Adoption?

I have reported your thread for you, asking if it can be moved.

Hi Groundhoghcg, we've moved your thread to our Adoption topic, as requested.

We did this, however the baby we fostered was our sons new birth sibling, so we went into knowing she would never be returned to her birth mother, and due to the actions lets say of the birth mother there would never be a birth father who would be considered suitable.

Our son knew from day one she was his birth sister, but as we had to facilitate contact etc we did say for the first few weeks we were only looking after her until SS decided if her birth mum could keep her safe.

Just to add a bit really in regards to early permanence when you already have a child. My daughter was 4 when our ep placement resulted in reunification to
borth parents. We had never called them sisters/ put labels on their relationship, but during the 19 months she was with us they naturally developed a sibling relationship, that my 4 year old mourned when she was gone. I know another couple where the same thing happened and their 5 year old had therapy to help them through the loss.

i see all the benefits of EP but if I could re write history, I would do it for a first child, but I wouldn’t do it for a 2rd/3rd, unless it was a biological sibling of my first, and even then I would have to put some serious thought about how my existing child could cope with the potential loss

xx

@Pollylong I'm so sorry this happened to you, I can't imagine how painful this must have been.

Can I ask why it took so long for a decision for reunification to take place? I naively thought that this would happen within the first 6-12 months/ish if it was going to.

@Simonjt thanks for sharing this

Cases that I’m aware of are taking longer and longer to reach the final hearing, one couple i know took 3 years for the adoption order to be granted, so the 12 month time frame currently isn’t working in all cases.

for us, she was placed in the august, and then in the jan the judge ordered a 6 month break in proceeding as he wanted birth parents to undertake 6 months of therapy, when the therapy finished there was a few mess ups in getting the psych eval booked and done.

Then the psych eval got done, then the professionals making the decisions wants further clarification about some of the points and the person doing the evaluation went off sick. So that dragged on till the end of that year, then the transition period to birth parents was a slow increase in time spent with them over a couple of months until she officially left. (She did come back as birth parents couldn’t do it and the adoption order was granted two weeks ago)

I don’t want to put you off at all, and want loads of people to do EP as I think it’s great for the child, but me and my husband underestimated the impact It Would have on our older daughter which is a regret I shall live with because somebody has to the the 1% where child is returned.

i would put myself and my husband though it all again as we are strong enough as a couple to weather that storm, but I would not put my children through it x

Can I ask why it took so long for a decision for reunification to take place? I naively thought that this would happen within the first 6-12 months/ish if it was going to.

It can take a long time because the processes take a long time, eg to assess parenting capacity of birth parents, to give time for supports and therapies to effect change, to assess if that change is ongoing, to make a legal case for permanency etc. You may live with the uncertainty of whether the child might be returned home for a long time, during which time you’re caring for them, parenting them. It’s not a quick process even if previous children have been removed. I’d think carefully about the potential impact on your older child before committing to early permanence.

You've definitely given me alot to think about, I wonder if traditional adoption would be more suited but I keep flip flopping. We probably need to do our training and do lots and lots of thinking. It's so helpful to hear how it's gone for others.

@Pollylong and @Jellycatspyjamas thanks for sharing that. It must feel awful to have something so important and acutely painful being at the mercy of slow processes, especially someone going on sickness leave.

Can I ask if anyone would know what the timings would be like if the child did need adoption? The Internet suggests 4 months for a placement order but I imagine this varies too? I was wondering if my thankfully very flexible employer might let me use special leave before my adoption leave prior to the child being placed with us.

When S came back to us we started the paperwork to apply for the adoption order in sept 23 and it was granted two weeks ago, May 24.

you might not need to wait till adoption order to go back to work tho, once placement order is granted family time with birth parents would stop, and if the little one has been with you for 12 months and is happy and settled and you think that they could cope in nursery/child
minder etc then you could go back to work. It’s up till the placement order that it’s difficult to work, and it is worth budgeting for unpaid leave if it takes longer that the adoption leave given. X

Another cautionary tale on time frames here. It took a little over 3.5 years here for adoption order to be granted here and I left hospital with LO at 22 hours old and a SW telling me there was absolutely no way LO would return home. Birth mum worked incredibly hard and LO was set to return home at 9 months before a change of direction was needed. You need nerves of steel and support in place for you older child throughout what can be an incredibly rocky road. I woukd advocate for EP till my last breath for babies but it is also almost impossible for the adults involved x

@eg88 nerves of steel indeed! I can't imagine how that must have felt for you all.

Can I selfishly ask if anyone else has any experiences, particularly of how long it took to get to matching?

We adopted our daughter through EP. She has been with us from day 1 and I am grateful for the chance to have known her from the beginning.

It’s a huge gamble though and I don’t think I could have done it a second time if she hadn’t stayed with us. The prolonged period of uncertainty was stressful, not helped by a national lockdown a few months in.

One thing I wasn’t ready for was the emotional rollercoaster of the matching process, we had two babies who were very close to being places with us where plans changed just before or after birth. One of those was a two weeks before our daughter came. Inevitably you became emotionally invested in these children.

There was a turn around of nine days from being called by our social worker to discuss a potential match to our daughter being placed with us. The adoption order took just under a year.