Foster For Adoption questions

[Koalakombucha]

If you have gone through the Foster For Adoption:

How long after you were approved as an adopter/foster carer did you bring home your child?
How old were they when they came home with you?
How long were they with you before you adopted them?
How long did you have to attend regular contact sessions with the first family?

Just trying to get a rough idea of what the timeframes are. Thank you

Hi the time frames are a bit
of how long is a price of sting and there is such a range of experiences.

however to answer ur questions as I understand the need for answers 😀

approved as second time adopters In end of 2019, ep baby arrived middle of 2020. however from when social services started actively family finding for us I think it was two months after they started looking, (we had a Placement not go ahead in jan 2020 and took a bit of a break)

they came home at 1 day old. Adoption order granted at 3 years 10 months (long and complicated story 😀

contact took place for just over 18 months, twice a week every week

Thank you @Pollylong. I fully take on board your comments about the wide range of experiences people have. I just wanted to get a few examples to help me anticipate worst case scenarios! Thank you for answering.

Were you officially the foster carer up until the adoption order was finalised?

We were one of the ‘worst case scenerios’ so I do like to throw my 2 pennies worth in on ep discussions, it’s good to know the worst case as if you can cope with that you can cope with anything 😀.

we were foster carers for 19 months and contact took place weekly, then reunification took place. She came back to us at nearly 3 once placement order granted and then we adopted her through mainstream adoption so no foster caring/contact when she came back 2nd time.

We’re at the other end of the scale and far less usual from knowing others & reading here. We found out he was to be placed with us about 6 weeks after approval panel & he arrived a month later at 4 months old. Changed from ffa to adoptive placement 2 months after arriving & we had matching panel the next month & the order was finalised 7 months after he arrived.

we were lucky he had an amazing social worker and so did we and everything went to plan! Not a story often heard!!

the other element to consider is how uncertain the future is with an early placement. Amazing in so many ways and we wouldn’t change a thing but 6 years on we are just starting to really understand this statement!

wish you all the best!

LO was placed 10 days after approval (I knew about them before approval). AO was granted over 3.5 years later. Contact was consistent throughout right up until AO - 2 times a week though it reduced slightly on the last year. I was FC until matching which I think happened around 20 months old but still had to ensure contact beyond that which meant reducing working hours (with no FC allowance to fall back on.)

Ours was relatively smooth too, but still with it's own unique delays and changes. Approved in January. Read the unborn baby profile in Feb. Was due to come straight from hospital in April. However delay because social workers couldn't get into court for initial hearing, usual after birth. This was 2022 and there were fewer court slots available as delays due to COVID and general court overwhelm due to austerity. So social workers had to find emergency place at Mother and baby unit so they could be discharged from hospital. This was for a month until they could get into court for placement to be agreed. LO finally arrived with us at 1month old. We had contact 3 times a week for 10 months. Matching panel in December. Adoption finalised almost exactly a year to the day she arrived and we had (the optional) celebration hearing 6 months later.

I did an interview about our experiences on the First Six Months podcast here : https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-first-six-months/id1724983619

It's the episode called Sarah

Ours is a slightly different story. We were approved in the October for traditional adoption only and had a call from our SW in March to tell us about a potential match with a 20 month old. Next day we had a call to say there was an issue with the FC so we may need to take LO sooner. Met with LO's SW and FC that day and said we wanted to go ahead with the match.

Next day (Friday) another call from our SW to ask if we would be happy if she asked for emergency ADM approval to change our PAR to FFA and could we take LO the following Tues!!

Our daughter came home at 21 months old in under a week of first finding out about her. We were lucky in that her placement order had been granted the previous week so only had to wait 2 months for the paperwork to be completed and have matching panel to change us from foster carers to adopters. Due to already having her we applied for the adoption order pretty much straight after matching panel and it went through first time.

In the 2 months before matching panel we had to take her to 4 contact sessions including the final goodbye session which was tough. We also had to keep a daily diary of what she did, ate, slept etc. and submit weekly to the SW.