To wonder why adoptive parents get paid?

[Member786488]

I’ll try and post a link to the story…

Possibly being dim… not unheard of.
I understand the fostering payments obviously but surely finance is something you consider if you’re going to have a child, so why is that different if you adopt.

other than some initial costs, why do you receive regular ‘adoption’ payments until the child is 18?

That’s very decent of you, OP.

But, but the andwer to your question OP is in the article you posted?

“It is designed to encourage people to take in children who might otherwise not be adopted due to the extra costs of looking after them and is usually paid weekly or monthly.”

So kids with disabilities or who need a lot of therapy because of abuse, etc.

Good on you for reflecting @Member786488 . Really refreshing to see this.

It is a shame @Dotjones hasn’t done likewise. For the record, @Dotjones , my children are very much my own, I’m their mum, not a ‘parent figure’ and of all the adoptive parents I’ve met (as an adoptive mum and someone who works in a related profession) none has adopted for financial motives!

This is not standard. I adopted 2 boys, I get nothing for them beyond child benefit.

What are you going on about? My niece is currently Fostering 3 boys and she receives £600 a week for each child.

Really? So she has a special allowance which is three times that set by the government?

I think people are confused between adoption and fostering. Adoption you get nothing, fostering you do.

My DD adopoted siblings (then 2 and 5) who had been neglected. Siblings are hard to place. She doesn't get paid but gets some extra childcare allowance which is useful for reducing the cost of after-school club and the school gets extra money for them for any tuition they may need. The older one has had some therapy paid for.

I should add that she has previously been a foster carer so has done many courses related to children which made her their first choice for adopting the children. Even the foster care allowances are not huge, they are allowances not pay.

That is unusually high, is she a private provider of foster care?

My husband and I adopted a sibling group, who were potentially to be separated. We didn't receive any money. I understand adoption allowance and why it's there. If you don't have any understanding of it, please read up. My eldest child went through 9 pairs of good quality shoes in 1 school year, the additional needs of adopted kids is totally different to just receiving CB.

I was about to post a “omg! Trauma! You have no idea! What the…” post and then I read your last post and realised that you must feel like absolute rubbish right now. Sadly most of the adoptive parents I know can’t get the therapy they need for their kids even with the help that’s available. The scars our children are left with run deep. People say to me “oh your daughter was lucky to have found you.” I was the lucky one. She is awesome. A most incredible human. But there is nothing in this world which is lucky about having to be taken away from the family you were born into because they couldn’t look after you. And whatever traumas were involved, that simple fact itself is a huge weight that these amazing young people have to carry with them every day.
So thank you for acknowledging that you were a bit of an ignorant person in your original post. But thank you for opening up a forum to highlight the needs of these kids. Because these kids are awesome and can go on to be absolutely amazing people who succeed in phenomenal ways and do brilliant things but they (and dare I say it, their adoptive families) may need a little extra support along the way to get them there. Hugs OP. I say stupid stuff all the time - and thanks for the apology. X

Some people have to give up work to ensure they can concentrate on the child’s needs.
a specialist foster carer can cost £1.5k a month. A specialist residential provision can be £2k a week.
a few hundred pound a month to give a complex child a loving home with parents who can concentrate on their needs seems like nothing.

Which local authority is Thai?
£600 for ALL 3 boys perhaps. But no way is she getting that per child.

The council who pay her are Tower Hamlets

She is... Its Tower Hamlets

^^

That's Essex, it differs with each borough.

I used to get paid £1250 a month 10 years ago for a child I fostered - about £400 of that was payment to carer (the rest spent on child)

Wasn't able to work because had to do school pick up - no after school anything's allowed - so obviously didn't cover my salary

Was very poor for a very long time and still have the effect of those years on my pension (don't have one) and my lack of building a career

If anyone thinks it's a way to make money they're crazy 🤷‍♀️

I foster a child with learning disabilities and he has needed so much counselling due to so much neglect before he came to us. Some years he finds so.ething triggers his emotions and he needs more counselling. He was on the bottom 1 percentile for height and weight and had been deprived of food. It took several years before he stopped hiding food under his pillow and a whole year before he stopped eating so much at any mealtime he made himself sick. Now 12 years later he is on 48th percentile for weight and 38th for height but he is physically fit and happy although he will probably always carry the emotional scars of his early 5 years. We would love to adopt him but his birth parents refuse to sign the agreement for that to happen. He refuses to have any contact with his birth father and his birth mother died of a drug overdose. He is very anti drugs because he understands it was probably the cause of his learning Disability as his birth Mum took drugs and drank a lot of alcohol whilst pregnant and before and afterwards too. Because he is fostered he has been provided with free counselling most of his life. He also gets LAC premiums in education and a bursary as now at college. We have saved a lot of the allowance we have been paid to care for him so he has a nest egg if ever he wants to buy a house. Not sure if he could cope on his own ATM. But he can live with me as long as he wishes. Foster payments stop at 18 but he will probably stay with me until late twenty's.

Adopter here, can confirm most of us don't get paid. The only adopters I know who get an allowance adopted a sibling group with complex needs. Most of us adopt younger children, whose needs are not yet evident, and good luck negotiating an allowance AFTER the Adoption is finalised.

A pp said her friends weren't warned about the bith parents background and the risks that posed. Tbh I find this hard to believe. It is seriously rare for adopted children NOT to have a background involving mental illness, substance misuse, learning difficulties, alcohol in utero, domestic abuse, neglect. Plus they have all experienced the trauma of losing their birth mother. This is what modern adoption is.

I didn't expect or want an allowance, but I have burning anger about the lack of aftercare for my child. The latest being the refusal of CAMHS to even assess her learning difficulties, on the grounds that ADHD-like symptoms can also be caused by attachment difficulties. I have been told to cure my child's attachment difficulties (as if) before CAMHS will even see her. And that, of course, means that I can't get her the extra support she needs at school.

I've often had other parents ask if I get paid to be an adopter. I've been told in the playground that our kids 'get everything'. Whereas the reality is that adopters save the public purse a bloody fortune, and have to fight for every scrap of support our kids get.

Same.

Without exception, the families I know who have adopted children all have children who have experienced trauma and/or have special needs, etc which requires extra time/attention/therapy/etc. Many families are encouraged to have a SAHP or a job that is very family friendly so they can be there for these children. Without extra funding, these children would languish in the foster care system and not be adopted.

And rightly so, they deserve every penny.
I live near a couple who often have police cars outside due to issues with adopted children. It can be extremely challenging.

I don’t know any adoptive parents that get paid. Fostering yes, adoption no.

This