Adopting and Adoption - With Somerset County Council

I have been approved to adopt, who will help me decide which child would fit with my family?

Approval is just the beginning. You will be allocated a Social Worker who specialises in fostering and adoption to support you through the next stage.

Can I adopt a child from outside Somerset?

You can only be registered as approved adopters with one Adoption Agency but when you have been approved, your details are registered with the National Adoption Register to help you make links regionally and nationally. If after three months, you have not been asked to consider a child locally, your details are sent to the Southwest Adoption Consortium, to see if there is a child in the Southwest region who could be placed with you. You are also able to subscribe to different specialist magazines that send out the details of children in the country who need adoptive families. These will be the details of children who could not be placed at that time with prospective adopters in their own area. This could be for many reasons such as difficulty finding a same ethnic match, or the child may have specific health needs, or needs to be placed a long way from their original home.

If after 12 months of approval you have not been matched with a child, your assessment can be reviewed and if necessary updated.

What will I be told about the child I am considering?

The child’s social worker presents information about the child, his or her family and their experiences in a report called the Child’s Permanence Report. This along with other reports about the child is presented to the Adoption Panel. The Adoption Panel recommends whether or not the child should be placed with you for adoption.

How will I know if this is the right plan for a child?

Your assessment report is referred to as a Form F. Your social worker will work with you to match you with a child or children in need of a family like yours. Your Form F will be sent to the Social Workers for prospective children, who will talk to your adoption social worker and share information. A meeting is arranged between the child’s social worker and the prospective adoptive parents to explore the suitability of the match. More than one family will be visited in order to secure the best match for the child and this can be a difficult time as you wait to find out the decision of the social worker. At this stage you would be given a copy of the child’s permanence report to read along with any other relevant information such as medical information and issues about his/her past and possible implications for his/her future. You will also know what level of contact is expected with birth family post adoption. You will also know the current implications for the child in relation to their legal status.

If the social worker for the child is happy to proceed, and, following discussions with your own social worker you feel you have all the information that you need and you agree, then you start the process of being matched with the child. This will take a few weeks before you are actually allowed to meet the child and the match has to be agreed at the adoption panel where that child currently lives.

The match between the child and adopters is presented to the Adoption Panel for a recommendation and then to the Agency for a decision, which will be made within 7 days of the panel meeting.

My child has settled well. When can I adopt?

Your child must have lived with you for at least 10 weeks before you can apply for an adoption order. Sometimes, it will take much longer than this if your child is still settling in.

During this period, you will have regular visits from your own social worker and the social worker for your child, to support and advise you. There will be a series of reviews and a decision about the right time to apply for adoption must be made at a review meeting in agreement with your social workers.