Foster to adopt/concurrent planning

my LA don't do this yet but are seriously considering it.  not sure what I think really (apart from it doing me out of job!!).  my guess is that you would still have to be carefully matched so would still be taking on a child who is already in foster care or from a very thorough (rare in my experience!) pre birth assessment.  some children are better suited (in my opinion) than others.  for example little man was youngest of several other sibs all taken into care and no chance of return and would have been ideal for this, very little contact with birth parents so very little disruption to him etc.  on the other hand squishy munchkin, as a first baby and much fought over (legally) and poorly handled baby would be much harder to take on as a concurrent carer becoz of the emotional turmoil to you when you see the problems occurring in the child from the legal decisions and the poor handling by parents, with no end in sight for the frequent parental contact, and nothing you can do to prevent it. 
so each case would have to be assessed very carefully before this kind of placement becoz you are not going into this to foster but to adopt and so to take on a baby with anything other than a very good chance of adoption is unfair to you as the potential parents.  great for the babies where it works, but awful for you as parents when it doesn't. and sadly, again in my experience, it is rare for sw's to take the kind of care when placing babies in fostering placements than they do in adoptive ones and my concern would be that they may just think 'any baby will do' and not think through as thoroughly the consequences for you, as the parents, for taking on this specific child.  anyway, just my two pennyworth.  I am not yet convinced that it is a policy that has been thoroughly thought through, certainly in my LA.  it probably can work, but for me it has too high a chance of 'failure' for the prospective parents and think it is not a solution for a good number of adopters.

It's Daffin and it's for her DS's sibling, so I don't know if that makes it a bit different?

Hi all. I've just spotted this thread. I'll give some info from my experience. There is a difference between Concurrency and The Foster to Adopt Scheme. Concurrency is where the SS plan (at least nominally) is for the child to return to birth family after whatever external support has been provided to make that possible - and with the realisation that the birth family are unlikely to turn things around, so the child is likely to remain in the Concurrent placement (but the adoptive parents must be willing to support the process, including direct contact, and possibly return to BF). With Fostering to Adopt the LAs plan for the child is adoption. Where the child is a new born baby, this means that a thorough pre-birth assessment has been done. It is likely that the BM has had more than one other child removed into long-term care or placed for adoption, and that even where the placement is contested the BF have little hope of winning the case.

Our DS has been with us for just over 2 years. We originally hoped to adopt him and his older sister but SS decided that she was too traumatised to place for adoption. we started talking to SS about being re-assessed to adopt again, when they discovered that birth mum was pregnant again (number 10) and fast tracked our application and homestudy. A complicating factor has been that a member of the BF stepped forward to be assessed for adoption, and it initially looked like they had a good chance of success. So we were doing it (1) to give the baby the best possible start, (2) to enable us to tell DS later that we really tried to keep him with one of his sibs, and (3) to have the chance of having a young child that hadn't experienced the trauma of repeated losses.

I had long ago given up any idea of having a baby and it really wasn't something that I was aware I wanted (and our DSs older sister would have been 4.5 at placement and we very much wanted her) but I have to say that looking after a tiny baby has been amazing. She's so delicious. The smell if her, the feel of her in my arms, the delight as she starts to smile and coo. All of that is amazing and we have had to do it with the possibility that we will have to hand her back. That is gradually becoming more remote, but was a real risk. So, you have to be strong. And willing to support Direct Contact with birth family. And be crawled over by social services (for longer than usual in an adoptive placement). It's not for the faint hearted, but I really think that if you think you are strong enough to cope if the placement is terminated, then it is an amazing thing to be able to do for the child - an uninterrupted placement protects them from starting their lives with loss and disruption.

I do know someone who is doing concurrent adoption LO went to her from labour ward that was 18 months ago and still no proper placement order she was told it would take about 3 months she has to take LO to contact, medical, and many other meeting and feels like her life is not her own and she could not have AL from work but it sounds good in theory. hopefully it will all be ok in the end.