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Don’t do it! Sorry. I have three - all came home separately and that’s been rough enough. I do know families who have adopted three at once and pretty much without fail it’s been very difficult. Have they done a sibling assessment? Do they/you understand about trauma bonds? What support are they currently having? What support will be ongoing - both for the children and for you? Adoption allowance - hefty I would hope, cleaner, respite, financial help towards settling in costs. What experience do you have of ‘parenting’ three traumatised children at once? Things to think about: Do you have three spare bedrooms? Not all can share. Mine can’t. In all likelihood you’ll need a 7 seater car. Food costs. Washing, ironing Holidays - a family is generally assumed to be 4 so holidays will cost more as you’ll need bigger accommodation Why do they think it’s in the best interests to keep them together? Age differentials? If one has ‘issues’ then in all likelihood the three might. Eg adhd x 1 is tricky; x3 would be a nightmare! Ditto asd, fasd, genetic inheritance. And so on. ....

Don't do it - we did and it was a mistake....knowing what we now know 11 years on. Donatella has give some great pointers - most of society is set up for two plus two families, so three is automatically trickier without the specialities of adopted children. I now think there should never be more adopted children than adults as these kids have much higher levels of needs than an average child - attachment, FASD, ODD, ADHD, ASD, PTSD are common and often undiagnosed at placement. I am also not sure about placing siblings together - ours have a really strong trauma bond and that has adversely affected them and prevented some of the healing. Probably with hindsight they should have been split - the eldest who had parented the younger two would have been better in a sole placement. Plus when they hit their teens and the eldest managed to track their birth family, the younger two were automatically drawn in despite being nowhere near ready....three unrelated siblings would have been far easier on that aspect. Good luck with your journey, but I'd recommend that you keep looking x

I am thinking 3 siblings placed at same time. All 3 in same foster placement!

That's what we did - DON'T!

Nope! Don’t do it x

I have researched the forum thoroughly and there isnt much positivity about a sib group of 3!

It's so sad isn't it, that these poor kids in large sibling groups have had lives/trauma that make them unable to live together. We took on two out of four, and I agonised over doing that, I felt I was ripping their wee family apart. But the truth was they each needed more parenting than being together in a family could give them. It was the right thing. They are now adopted as two sets of two, we have contact and everything is as good as it can be, given the circumstances. Without wishing to hijack the thread, reading everyone's negative experiences, I was wondering whether things might have gone better for you all with more (really good) support for those who adopted three? It's a bit of a moot point, because in the current climate, it's not likely to be available for the OP. You will find the right family Chirpy chicken. It's so good that you are doing research! xxx

I think in comparison to some families, our life is going quite well. One hoping to go to Uni, one doing GCSEs and thriving and dd also doing really well. But. We are now more than 17 years in with eldest and they were all placed separately over a period of a few years so each one had 1-1 with me for a good period of time. Plus their main difficulties aren’t trauma and attachment related. That’s not to say things have always been easy because they haven’t. It was a long battle getting assessments, diagnoses, statements, the right schools and the therapeutic support we needed when we needed it. And of course this is all easier to navigate if you’re doing it one at a time rather than trying to do all three at once. My three were babies - easy to place, no AA, no support. Well as we discovered, easy to place doesn’t mean easy to parent ... and it can be difficult to know what future issues will be if they are babies/toddlers at the time. I think OP needs to think carefully about what support they will need. And ask for it. Because three will require an awful lot of support : therapeutically, financially, practically. And a return to paid employment is going to be difficult if not impossible. You may need to be a stay at home parent indefinitely. Will finances allow?

Haven - in response to your question, it might have been better if we'd been supported rather than blamed when things were really tough as they hit their teens...however the eldest was continually retraumatising the younger two and sabotaging any attachment they were developing to us as she was unable to let go of her role as their parent - even now that continues to some extent and she no longer lives with us. The younger two began to flourish once she left - I suspect if SW had been properly informed about trauma and attachment, that would have been even more positive, but some of their decisions were damaging to the younger two. Added to this, she never let go of her birth family and once a teen managed to track them down via social media - this adversely affected the younger two who would have had more protection if they'd been placed separately. Even now she puts pressure on the other two to cut contact with us...they don't want to and recently have even cut contact with her for a while because of this. I do think that adopters taking on complex adoptees need a scaffold of support around them - timely access to therapies for the children and themselves and any SW working with the family needs to be fully up to speed on likely issues and how they may present and how to deal with them. We found ourselves blamed and nothing we said believed when our eldest hit the rails as a teen. As you say, in the current climate of tight budgets and cuts across the board, I don't see things improving. We are in Scotland so have even more limited support than England where there is some help in terms of Pupil Premium Plus and Adoption Support Fund (and I know these two have issues) and sadly our current LA has a reputation for being one of the worst in terms of post adoption support and understanding (we moved from one the best due to security issues). Its a tough one.

Donatella - are your 3, birth siblings?

Eldest and youngest half sibs. He’s almost 18, she’s 13. Very similar characters and personality traits - but she’s more complex and currently dx with autism but also undergoing genetic testing. Middly not a birth sib - he’s dx adhd and asd. Both middly and youngest statemented and in special Ed. Think another thing to bear in mind is that the more children the bps have, the more complex each subsequent child can be - epigenics. We have been fortunate in that on the couple of occasions we needed therapeutic help, we had it. But getting the younger two assessed, diagnoses, statemented and into special education provision has been very stressful and I’m still a stay at home mum because it’s been impossible to return to work so financially a strain as well.

I have a large adopted family (quite a few more than 3) and with one exception they are doing very well. The exception has had many of the difficulties you can read about on the "Difficult Times" board and I can't deny that he has impacted negatively at times on the other children. However as time goes on he is doing better and better (currently maintaining a tenancy and doing an Access course and hoping to go to uni next year) and I think the critical mass of functional children in our family has helped him navigate back to a decent life. But, and this is a big but, all mine were placed separately and not as sibling groups, and mostly with quite long gaps. This enabled each child to be the "baby" for a decent length of time and become thoroughly secure in our family before the next arrived. Also bringing them up and home educating them has been a very full-time job and I have not been able to work. All this to say that I don't think it is family size as such that is the inherent problem, but the neediness of these children, especially in their early years when they need intensive care in order to heal from early harm, that is the issue. Editing to add that I so agree with Bop that input from social services has been uniformly negative, blaming us for our son's problems which we inherited and didn't cause. Just a glance at our other very successful and functional children should have made it obvious that poor parenting was not the cause of our son's difficulties. If I had my time over again I would have nothing to do with them - an awful thing to say really but true. We have found our own help and support. I hope things are better now but I am not convinced.

Thankyou fruitcake, your story is encouraging! I am not going into this wearing rose tinted glasses. I am fully aware of many of the issues, including the Incompetencies and blame culture displayed by SW. I feel passionately about where possible keeping sibling groups together. However, I also appreciate the trauma bonds that can potentially come with them. So far 2 things have been highlighted that I hadn't thought of... The older child contacting BF and the effect that would have on the younger ones, and continuing to have contact with their other siblings, I would be open to that!,

But as Fruitcake does make clear, the children were placed separately with gaps to enable 1-1 time with each. That’s not going to happen with three at once.

Mine are not birth siblings and are 5 1/2 years apart, both of which factors helped a lot. But their SW reports were very enlightening. Eldest had been carer for his siblings and to this day still worries and feels responsible for keeping an eye on them. That tips over to keeping an eye out for our younger boy, who never had a brother and looks up to him. Which works because eldest has his head screwed on sensibly ! Eldest met his siblings three times a year for meet ups and that was very beneficial for him, and us meeting the other adopters. Younger one , from a family of four. Eldest was in carer role, our son was scapegoated as encouraged by both parents, next child was the favoured one and allowed to blame my son for her actions, nd youngest was just a baby. It was decided to seperate them and this was the best decision ever for my son, who was hugely relieved. The eldest we see occasionally and she was able to relax and have the rest of her childhood. My son was free of the scapegoating and got the personal attention he so desperately needed, and his sister went to a family able to put in boundaries and help her take responsibility for her own actions. Baby went to another loving home. None of this would have happened if they had been kept together as these trauma bonds are now recognised to almost certainly continue into new family and unlikely to change while the kids are still together ( as Pear Tree describes) There is an idea that siblings should always be together but that's not always best for the children. They don't always have the best relationship, especialally after their experiences. Our youngest eventually met with older sister a few times but really does not want much contact at all. We are his family as he has clear memories of abuse. I agree at least same number of adults to kids at start point. Sometimes , as as2 has had tricky times and got bigger/older we have been glad as1 is willing to be a third adult ! I am personally convinced we wouldn't have made it without his input. But his tendency to take charge, as having been a carer, means that had we taken on one of his younger siblings he would have struggled to let us parent the younger one, or trust our decisions. He would have felt he knew the child better, and that he had a right to interfere. I have looked at big adoptive families, much commoner in the US and they seem to work where, as Fruitcake describes, new children enter an established and strong family who embrace them and who they cannot threaten with numbers. Starting with one strong and sensible kid like my eldest. If we were younger parents that's how I would do it to end up with a big family ( see a home for Maisie for a UK example)

Chirpy - I think to some extent it depends on the kids - if the eldest has had to parent the younger two at all, they will struggle to let go of that and it will cause ongoing issues. If these are all younger siblings and there is an older one elsewhere, you would have a better chance...but still don't underestimate the needs of these kids. I haven't worked since our arrived; DH has had to take a major step down....we have both had extensive counselling to overcome the effects. I don't want to go into all the details of our experience but it has been far more horrific than I could ever have imagined - before we adopted I'd read all the horror stories and was naively sure it would be different for us - sadly it wasn't....and as I sit here I'm not sure we've made any difference as history just seems to be repeating itself.

I have a friend who adopted a sibling group of 3, placed all at the same time. The children had been subject to considerable neglect and abuse by their birth family and the oldest had been trying to parent the younger ones. My friend and her husband tried so hard to do the right thing by their children, but things got very bad. The oldest child reenacted abuse on the younger ones and eventually had to be moved to a care facility. That child was never able to return to home. My friend's marriage broke up because of the strain of it all. She said the children should never have been placed together, especially the older one. She felt strongly that all of the children would have benefitted from being placed as only children. I hope you will ask lots of questions of the social workers as outlined by previous posters.

At the most basic level, not all siblings get along - even securely attached families with no trauma, attachment, genetic or other issues. I naively assumed that my two half sibs would have a magic bond, being brother and sister. In reality they simply don’t. Even though they’re similar in some ways, they’re just an irritant towards each other. My non birth sibs get along far better ... so don’t assume being birth siblings means they’re closely bonded. They may be, they may not!

Honestly folks, I am taking everything on board. That's why I asked for the good, bad and ugly! Bop, your last paragraph has hit hard! Thank you for your honesty. I don't know you, and I don't know your children, but I am quite sure that you have made a difference. ❤️