Fostering & Adoption: A personal journey with support from Kids Inspire
You may or may not know, but a lot of the work we do here at Kids Inspire centres around children and young people who have been either adopted or fostered. Children not living with their biological families often come from backgrounds involving trauma, abuse or neglect, which is why our work is such a crucial part of post-adoption support for parents who adopt.
I myself have recently become a new parent via foster to adopt, and the support and networks available through Kids Inspire are superb to help all types of therapeutic parenting. Below, I give a personal account of my journey and explain the differences between fostering and adoption, alongside some of the key skills required to become an adoptive parent.
Why Choose To Foster or Adopt A Child?
I and my partner have wanted to start a family for a while, but as a same-sex couple were limited in our options in having a child biologically. Adoption was always our first choice as we wanted to give a child a stable and loving home, without the complexities and financial implications involved with surrogacy. Our process started just over a year ago and involved a lot of assessments, workshops and meetings with social workers to ensure we were a suitable fit.
The mandatory workshops involve training and education on why children need fostering or adoption, the trauma they may have experienced, and understanding the loss for all involved, both the child and their birth parents. These eye-opening accounts created empathy towards everyone involved, especially the birth parents. Today, it is rarely the choice of the birth parents for their children not to live with them. A key phrase I will always remember is the term ‘sad, not bad’ surrounding birth parents and their individual circumstances.
We then had training on foster to adopt, also known as early permanence, which is likely for anyone wanting a new-born or child under one year old. This is because it can take 6-12 months for a court placement order to be obtained to legally adopt a child. Within early permanence, you become foster parents in the short term with a view for legal adoption once a placement order is granted. I instantly had a connection to this route and said to my partner I had a feeling this was the path we would be taking.
After our 6-9 months of training, references, medicals and assessments, our PAR report (prospective adopters report) was written up ready for panel. Panel is the final stage of the process whereby we discuss our life, adoption journey and report with a panel of professionals and local workers (teachers, doctors etc). Within the Panel Interview, they reviewed our application and asked us questions based on the report seeking an approval to become adopters with a final decision made the same day. Even though on paper the thought of panel can seem daunting and nerve-wracking, the panel team were lovely and I am happy to say we were approved as both adopters or foster carers in May 2022.
Skip ahead 3 months and we have been with our foster to adopt placement child for 3 weeks now, and absolutely love him. We were fairly quick to get matched with a child after panel approval so it was a rush to get the nursery ready (fostering to adopt generally happens quicker compared to traditional adoption). However, as tough as new parenthood is, and the implications being a foster parent has (contact, logbooks, meetings), we wouldn’t change it for the world!
What Is The Difference Between Fostering, Adoption & Fostering to Adopt?
The key difference between adoption and fostering is a legal one. An adoption order ends the child’s legal relationship with their birth family, whereas children living in foster care remain the legal responsibility of their Local Authority and their birth parents.
Fostering: The aim of fostering is to provide a secure, stable, and safe environment to live in for children who are unable to live with their birth family. They still remain the legal responsibility of their birth family and Local Authority during this period, as foster carers do not have legal guardianship over their foster children.
While in foster care, children live in the home of their foster carer and are treated as a member of the family. The length of time they spend in the home varies with each individual case. Some foster children only spend a few days, weeks or months in the foster home, while others spend years with their foster families.
Adoption: Similar to fostering, adoption provides vulnerable children with a safe and stable environment to grow up in when they can no longer live with their birth family. Like foster children, children who are adopted children will have likely suffered significant trauma, abuse or neglect. However, unlike fostering, children who are adopted live permanently with their adoptive parents and become the legal responsibility of their adoptive family. Their adoptive parents become their official legal guardians and must, by law, provide care for their adopted child until they reach adulthood.
Fostering To Adopt (Early Permanence): A fostering for adoption placement will only be made where there is clear evidence to the Local Authority that there is little likelihood that the birth parents can resolve their problems or that other family members known to the Local Authority can care for the child.
Fostering for adoption places a child with approved adopters who are also approved as foster carers, known as dually approved carers. Another route adoption agencies can use is to approve adopters as foster carers for a particular named child. During the fostering stage of the placement the court will weigh up what is in the child’s best interests in the longer term.
The fostering for adoption carers need to be able to deal with the uncertainty of this period before the court’s final decision. If the court agrees that the child should be adopted and the adoption agency approves the match between the carers and the child then the placement becomes an adoption placement.
What is Therapeutic Parenting?
Therapeutic parenting is a highly nurturing parenting approach, with empathy at its core. It’s discussed at length within adoption training workshops to guide parents to help children from trauma backgrounds.
Therapeutic parenting uses firm but fair boundaries and routines to aid the development of new neural pathways in the brain. The aim is for children to gain trust in adults and for their lower brain (survival brain) to connect with their higher brain (prefrontal cortex/thinking brain) so they can link cause and effect.
Using boundaries and routines helps children to understand there is consistency and predictably in their lives (they know they will have breakfast, lunch, and tea plus snacks). Therapeutic Parenting advises you to use visual timetables to support your children with this.
Respond with empathy using the PACE model (Playfulness to connect and diffuse a situation, Acceptance of the child whilst not accepting of aggression, Curiosity to detect your child’s need, all steeped in Empathy).
One Type of Therapeutic Parentings Involves THERAPLAY!
One key skill taught around play and therapeutic parenting is the use of Theraplay!
In this common treatment, the Theraplay parent or practitioner guides the child through playful, fun games, developmentally challenging activities, and tender, nurturing activities. The very act of engaging each other in this way helps the parent regulate the child's behaviour and communicate love, joy, and safety to them. It helps the child feel secure, cared for, connected and worthy.
One example of a Theraplay activity may include a football style game using a cotton ball and paper straws, blowing across the table trying to score a ‘goal’ at either end. Children may then find it easier to discuss their emotions and feelings in this play environment rather than a traditional 1-2-1 counselling session.
By Jonathan Cassidy-Hinds (Comms Officer at Kids Inspire)
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