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Not sure how current my experience is as ad been home two and three quarter years. My experience is she and her siblings placed in separate fc placements, one sib was 13, one was a baby and cherrypip was 6 and half. She was placed in temp fc who were approved for babies, but she ended up staying there until nearly 9. She was deemed unadoptable until aged 8,her baby Sib was adopted almost straight away, older son ended up back with by at 18.I know of two older children in fc who have been there since they were little, not sure how many placements they have had, but a few probably. I also know of older children who stay with fc' s with special guardianship.In my agency all older children have been placed for adoption not concurrency as far as I am aware. Concurrency does sound a sensible thing to do if possible but realistically how often does it happen? Again it depends on each individual child and what is available or appropriate for them. In my experience older children are still waiting a long time for adoption, if ever they are given that opportunity. :blackeye:].

I hate typing on a tablet, they keep changing words. So it should say older sibling went back to birth family at 18. And black eye is emoticon

Thanks raspberry smoothie,In all this talk of more adoptions and quicker, it seems to me that these are the kind of kids we should be thinking about. Babies and toddlers are easier to place. The question is, what is causing the delays? Is it numerous attempts at birth family repair, or legal process, or simply lack of adopters.? Is any of this being addressed in the new government initiatives. Hopefully the extra encouragement to adopt will feed through to more older adoptions. Several people I know , who now have two primary school aged children placed at 6 and 7 and now happily adopted, nearly gave up because of the delays with assesment, approval and waiting time for a match. We were fastbtracked for assesment because of our age,and I also had a long wait once approved before getting ds1. Ds2 would have been a further two year wait if they hadn't done the concurrent thing , but instead waited till the PO.

The age of the child when taken into care and resulting 'condition' is also signifcantSimba had two short (5-6 months) periods in FC before he was four. When he was taken into care for the last time he autistic behaviours were very extreme, He did not speak for another year. I doubt he was adoptable at that point. FC did a pretty amazing job with him, but that took time and all the time he was getting older and therefore less 'attractive' I dont think there is any merit in speeding up the process for the sake of it but here seems to be so many factors involved and reasons why delays occur. Of course its still very early days for us, but I think that Simba and I are a success. What we can never know is, if SWs had tried to find an adopter had been found when Simba was say 5 or 6 when his behaviours were still quite extreme, would that have been so successful as them waiting the extras year or so. What I find so frustrating in our case is the time it took to get him home. I first saw Simba's profile in July, yet he didnt come home until the following April. SWs took 5 months to get out to see me, there were no other potential adopters for him in the picture. 9 months to get him home - what was that about?

I can empathise wih that Serrakunda - I was officially linked to Starlet in Nov having first seen her profile in early Oct but I have yet to start intros. Placement is due late May. This is in spite of SWs still describing this is as one of the best matches they have seen.... Starlet has been in FC for two and a half years. A lot of the early months were spent trying to identify a family member to care for her, which I understand, but the delays since I was linked have been for fairly trivial reasons.

My understanding is that "concurrent" care is for under 2s where there is little realistic prospect of them returning to the birth home so change of carers should be minimised. I understand that this is almost always where the birth family have previously failed to parent other children, or where there is very little realistic prospect of their parenting capacity changing, and that this would be known before the child was placed with the foster carers.With older children I think the scheme is being called "foster to adopt" and is like pingu describes - where a child has already been in foster care - and at the time the child entered foster care it wasn't known what would happen with the birth family. The plan is now adoption, and an adoptive family have been identified, though the legalities haven't all been done and dusted, so they have to be moved to a new family under a fostering arrangement.I guess my question is though how much time will this save. What realistic time scale is there between identifying an adoptive home and being able to place the child as an adoptive placement? I imagine others will know more than me about this though.

Well in out case it was 14 months between him coming to us and the courts clearing him for adoption. ( 16 if you date it from when we were identified as his adopters) Sounds enough to be worth it to me. At his previous moving rate, that would have been another three foster carers.

I think what does need speeding up is how long children remain with bf cherrypip was known to be at risk at age 4 before her baby brother was born and after many many chances, parenting classes etc they still left the kids with by for another 2 and half years. Plus there was an older sibling of 18 who spent his whole life with bfs and and was missed.This needs to change and is topical today if you have seen the news. I think the important thing is remove sooner from bf for older children as well as younger, but when in fc each case needs to be assessed individually. Cherrypip needed stable fc placement as was classed unadoptable and was only put up for adoption because of progress made over two years with them and nurture unit.

I agree about the damage done when kids stayin bf for years, but change in this area is not likely to happen, otherwise the papers wiould be full of cries about children being "stolen" by social services and " forcibly " adopted. It happens as it is !!!