Fostering News: Changing adoption - adopted children's views

The Government are proposing a number of changes in the law about adoption and asked us to help them find out what children and young people who have already been adopted think about their ideas. 

429 adopted children told us about the most important stage of being adopted and what they think about the Governments ideas of 'fostering for adoption', speeding up the training and approval of adoptive parents and the fast approval for parents who had adopted or fostered before.  Here’s what they said ...

MOST IMPORTANT STAGE IN GETTING ADOPTED

We asked the children which part of the adoption process had been the most important part for them.

• 42% of the children said moving in to live with their adoptive parents
• 29% said the court order saying the adoption was finally completed
• 19% said being told they were going to be adopted
• 11% weren't sure.

FOSTERING FOR ADOPTION

Fostering for adoption is one of the Governments proposed changes.  Their idea is that as soon as it is decided by social care services that a child is to be adopted and a family is chosen, the child can move in to live with the parents straightaway.  The child would not have to wait in a different family as a foster child while social care services get permission for their adoption to start. 

74% of the children supported this Government proposal.  The top 3 good things about this are:-

• children will get to know their new family sooner
• fewer moves from one family to another
• it would save time in getting adopted

There are some bad things about this idea though - if the adoption doesn't go ahead after all, the child will be moved again and become more upset because they thought they were with the parents they would be staying with permanently.  The children also thought that it was still important for a child and carers to get to know each other first before deciding that it was to be their permanent placement so, fostering for adoption would be a trial period for the adoption itself.

SPEEDING UP THE TRAINING AND APPROVAL OF ADOPTIVE PARENTS

From the answers we received about speeding up training and adoption, it was obvious that there was a lot of adult input here.  Therefore, these results are best viewed as families views not purely children's opinion. 

67% of families voted to speed up training and approval of adoptive parents.  They said that this would help get children adopted quicker and that parents would be ready to adopt.  Some families worried that training could become too rushed and might not be enough.

FASTER APPROVAL FOR PARENTS WHO HAVE ALREADY ADOPTED OR FOSTERED

Another idea of the Government's proposals was to approve those who had already adopted or fostered a child very quickly.  Over three quarters of the children said this was a good idea.  The main reasons being that parents would have already been checked, they would have experience of looking after a child and more children could be adopted.    This who thought this wasn’t such a good idea said everyone should have the same checks and training and some young people thought being a foster carer was very different from adopting a child.

Source: www.rights4me.org/home/library/reports/report-changing-adoption2012.aspx

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