A pathway from long-term care to adoption: findings from an Australian permanency programme

Abstract

Children who hope to be adopted from the care system frequently experience delays, unproductive disruption in attachments and difficulties locating new families. This article seeks to contribute to the search for effective adoption practice by exploring an approach developed in Australia, whereby restoration and 'long-term foster care with the view to adoption' are undertaken intensively but sequentially. When the child cannot return home, adoption is one of the options considered but no decision is made until a long-term foster family is well established. While planning happens concurrently, placements never have dual purposes and are therefore different from what is known as concurrent planning.This study is based on an internal agency examination of adoption records over a 10-year period. Open adoptions were ultimately achieved for one-third of those who entered long-term care, and the children had a wide range of ages and included sibling groups and those with behavioural difficulties. Adoption took, on average, 4.4 years to finalise but there was wide variation in timeframes, with younger children being adopted more quickly. Perhaps most significantly, a permanent placement was found relatively soon for children of all ages, as they did not have to wait for a family willing to commit to adoption or endure lengthy legal proceedings. The adoption was most timely when both restoration and long-term care teams were managed within one Downloaded from agency (albeit in separate programmes). Furthermore, permanent families were located for children for whom adoption ultimately proved to be inappropriate.

Previous life experiences and the vulnerability of children adopted from out-of-home care: The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences and child welfare decision making

“…In New South Wales, the Barnardos long-term care program is known as Find-a-Family and details of the program have been described in international literature (Forbes, O'Neill, Humphreys, Tregeagle, & Cox, 2011;Tregeagle, Cox, Forbes, O'Neil, & Humphreys, 2011;Tregeagle, Moggach, Cox, & Voigt, 2014 ).…”

Adoption from care: international perspectives on children’s rights, family preservation and state intervention

“…For countries such as Norway and Ireland, where most adoptions from care have been by existing foster parents with whom the child has lived for years rather than months, arrangements for family links for children in long-term foster family care are very relevant to postadoption arrangements. The Norway chapter reports movement towards encouraging 'open adoption', and in New South Wales, being willing to facilitate continuing birth family links is a requirement for prospective adopters in a specialist 'permanence' programme (Tregeagle et al, 2014). For England, where, in recent years, most placements for adoption from care are of young children with families not previously known to them, the emphasis moves very quickly to a consideration of pre-and post-placement links between birth families and adopters, and the relational transfer of the child from the foster family to the new family.…”

General public perceptions and motivations to adopt children from out-of-home care in New South Wales, Australia

“…Despite these shifts in societal attitudes and practices, however, the history of adoption practices in Australia still contributes to a reticence among practitioners to consider open adoption as a permanency option for children in out-of-home care (Tregeagle, Moggach, Cox, & Voigt, 2014). Cashmore (2014) suggested possible reasons for the low numbers of children being adopted from out-of-home care in Australia.…”