What sort of children need to be adopted?
There are many children who cannot live safely with their birth families and a small number of mothers who relinquish their babies for adoption. So the children who need adoptive families can be from a few months old to 11 or 12 years old and they may need a new family on their own or to be placed with one, two or three brothers or sisters.
Older children, because they will have had unsettled and damaging experiences before coming into the care of the local authority may be exhibiting challenging behaviours or their development may have been significantly delayed. They may suffer from the effects of their birth mothers use of drugs or alcohol in pregnancy or form the chaotic lifestyle of both parents abusing alcohol or drugs or being involved in domestic violence. The impact on children of all of these factors will be explained and explored during your preparation and assessment and you will be helped to consider just what you can or can’t deal with.
Sometimes for younger children there is significant information missing such as the identity of their birth father and therefore there may be little or nothing known about one side of their inheritance. What information is available will be shared with you and support services identified to help you as the child grows if difficult issues emerge.
Are there Asian children waiting to be adopted?
There are a small number of children of 2 asian parents who need adoptive families but a larger number who have one asian and one white british parent. Dual heritage children wait longer for adoptive families to be found for them and it is usually hoped to find a family for them where at least one parent shares their asian heritage, culture and religion.
Do I need to tell them or anyone else that they are adopted?
Adoption is no longer treated as a secret or shameful thing. You would be helped to make your child aware from an early age that he or she is adopted and that they have a birth family about whom they may be curious and have a right to know. If your child is older then he or she will remember things about where and with whom they lived before they came to you and you will be able to help them understand why they couldn’t stay with their birth family or foster carers and how they came to be part of your family. This is not always an easy thing to do and you would have help and support in doing this.
Am I able to adopt as a single person?
Yes, single people can apply to adopt. As long as you have people who can support you, particularly in the early stages following a child being placed with you then you can become a single adoptive parent.
Do you have to own your own home or be in full time work to adopt?
No it is not a requirement that you own your home though you must have secure accommodation for any child joining your family and enough room for the child to have a bedroom of his or her own unless he or she is a baby sharing a room with you or with a brother or sister of the same sex.
You do not have to be rich to adopt but you do need an income or entitlement to benefits in order to support a child. Some children are placed with adopters with an allowance to cover the cast of caring for them but this depends on the needs of the child and not on your income.
A child placed with you is likely to need a great deal of love and attention to help them settle down and ideally one parent should be able to be at home full time for at least the first 6 moths, sometimes more. Child care arrangements, should you both need to work, would be explored during the assessment.
Am I too old to adopt?
There is no upper age limit though the agency has to take account of your general health and the likelihood that you will be able to parent a child until that child reaches independence. There is a lower age limit however. You need to be at least 21 to adopt.
Can you adopt if you already have children?
Yes you can. Many adopters have children already. The social worker visiting you at home will want to be sure that your children, if they are old enough, understand that you want another child to join your family and that your time and energy will have to be shared. It is not usually considered to be appropriate to adopt a child older than the children you already have though occasionally this happens. An adopted child is usually at least a couple of years younger than the youngest child you already have. Some adopters have already raised their birth children to teenage or young adulthood when they decide to adopt.
How long does it take before you get a child?
The whole process from making a formal application to getting a decision as to whether or not you are considered suitable to adopt should take not more than 6 months though this is only a guide. Sometimes there are good reasons why it may take longer, such as a very complicated issue arising from your own circumstances requiring you to spread out the social work visits or halt the assessment for a while. Your social worker should be able to keep you informed about the speed of the process and when it is anticipated that your assessment will be completed.
Can you adopt more than one child?
Many of the children who need to be adopted have brothers or sisters and wherever possible social workers try to keep them together. If brothers and sisters are adopted by separate families it is often planned for them to have contact with each other as they grow up. The reasons for this and how it works would all be explained to you.
What does it cost to adopt a child?
It doesn’t cost anything to apply or to be assessed as an adopter. If a child is very young and is placed without brothers or sisters then the cost of bringing them up is usually met by you unless they have identified special needs which incur you in extra costs. Where children are placed in sibling groups of two or more there is often an allowance paid to the adoptive family to assist with the costs involved. This depends on each individual situation and how much you earn. All of this will be fully looked at when you are considering specific children.
What is the difference between adoption and fostering?
Foster carers look after children who may hopefully return home to their birth family or children who need to have a lot of contact with their birth family. Foster carers aren’t the legal parents of the children they foster and the local authority, and sometimes the birth parents, make the decisions as parent.
Adopters become, when the adoption order is granted, the legal parents of the child they have adopted and they then have full parental responsibility. From the point of placing a child for adoption the prospective adopters share parental responsibility with the local authority. When a child is adopted he or she can take the surname of the adoptive parent and is treated legally as the child of the adopters in the same way as any child born to them.
Will the children have to see their birth parents?
It is very rare for children to have ongoing contact with their birth parents but they may want to keep in touch with brothers and sisters who have been adopted. Sometimes arrangements are made for information to be exchanged between adoptive parents and birth parents so that the child grows up knowing about the family they came from. This is decided for each child and would be fully discussed with you.
If there are problems will there be any help or support?
Yes indeed. There is post adoption support available for you and an adoption support plan is drawn up when you are matched with a child. Support can be of various sorts and can include financial support as well as advice and the provision of services.
|
