# Concurrent Fostering?



## MIMI4 (Feb 16, 2007)

Hi all

I've posted on here a couple of times and asked lots of questions, all answers have been very helpful!

We are thinking along the lines of concurrent fostering (0-2yrs) which can lead to adoption  as I understand it. We have a birth child, 6 years and I have 18+ years of experience working with babies and children of all ages. We feel this may be the right move for us, although I am a bit worried about getting too attached, then feeling distraught when a child may leave our care. However, I strongly feel that with my skills and experience (and the fact that we are NOT ttc anymore) it would be a waste not to apply for this scheme. I work with LAC at times and there is so much in the media at the moment about babies/children being negleted I feel even if we can't have anymore birth babes how good we would feel making a difference to their lives or at least supporting them in the early days.

I have looked this up in the search but couldn't find anything and was wondering if anyone is thinking about or is doing this type of fostering now? 
How long was the training? 
Is the training etc different to 'ordinary' fostering? 
How did you feel when a child left? 
With the child placed in your care how likely is it that you can foster them? 
Was it what you expected?
Does it go in your favour that you had fostered them and can then adopt them?

I'm going to speak to the s/w tomorrow for some of the answers but I wanted to hear it from 'our' side first!! 

I am working part time at the moment and would like to give up to be a foster carer if possible. I'm not sure that we can afford to do that. Does anyone know what the weekly allowance is? (0-2yrs). I don't want that to sound terrible!!! I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from


Thanks

MIMI4


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## Suzie (Jan 22, 2004)

Hiya

I am an LA foster carer who is waiting for the final court date for the adoption of our foster child  

There are a couple of ladies on here (fiona and superal) who have very different experiences/outcomes of concurrency and I am sure they will both give you some great advice 

As far as allowances are concerned it depends on your LA and also what level carer you get approved at. We started at level 3 and are now level 5 specialist carers so receive much more being a level 5 carer. If you look at your LA website/google you should be able to get a rough idea of their allowances 

xx


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## maisiek (Apr 25, 2005)

Hi,

We have been approved as adopters but sadly its been over a year now and we still haven't been matched to a child so we have looked at concurrency.  I think you get approved as an adopter first (but I could be wrong).  We have now also attended a one day concurrency training day to find out more about it.  If we decide to go ahead we have been told that we will need 3 further home assessment visits to explain/prepare us for concurrency and then we would then to go panel (again) to get approved.  

Regarding the process we have been told that we would probably be matched with a baby rather than a toddler.  We would have to attend their approved contact centre 3 times a week for 2 hours.  The process takes about 8/9 months and if the birth parent has not met their targets/goals (sorry sounds a bit cold but you know what i mean) then the baby is free for adoption and you would have to go to the adoption panel to be approved, then its the usual court procedure.

I live in Devon so I am not sure if the finances alter, but we were told that we would be paid the fostering allowance and the statutory adoption allowance so that amounts to £800 a month which is quite a lot, but I get the impression that they are really keen to attract people onto this scheme in our area.

You are not allowed to take holidays once approved, although you can negotitate a long weekend away etc.

It seems very exciting, and a lovely idea from the child's prospective as they aren't being being moved about.  But I agree it would be very hard if the baby went back to the birth parents.  We met a couple on the course who had done concurrency and had now adopted their baby.  They were told to think of it as fostering the child, so that it would help if s/he had to leave you.

Its a real hard decision, we are still uncertain what to do, its scary but could potentially be very rewarding.

Good luck in your decision,

Maisie xx


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## superal (May 27, 2005)

Hi

I am one of the people Suzie talked about and I am also one of the first people in England to experience a baby being returned to her BPS.....................I can only tell you my side of the story which may or may put you off doing concurrency..........you may read Fiona's story when she replies.....which I am sure she will do & you may think differently again.............all i will say is it takes a VERY strong person to do concurrency and go into it with your eyes wide open!

Right having said I that I will start my story!

It will be 9 years this June that the baby we were looking after was returned to her BPS......................the baby was a little girl and came to live with us at the age of 3 months old.......for confidentiality reasons I can not tell you any more than that........she stayed with us for 7 months.

in those 7 months of her being with us I/we took her back to see her BPS 3 times a week for 4 hours each visit..............the trek for us was an hours drive to the centre where we did contacts.................for some it is a less of a drive for others it may vary! So an hour there and an hour back.

Her BPS were young and gave me and my DH a hard time......in that I mean they would not accept that anything we did for their baby was for their babies interests......when we were advised to move her from the bottle onto solid food that kind of thing....they gave us grief saying it was their choice when she should be moved onto food................like I say young.

Be prepared for contacts to be increased even if it looks like the baby is staying or going......................they have to be increased to see if the BPS can cope.......ours went up to 4 times a week to 5 hours a session.....this had an impact on us picking our DS up from school so you must consider everyone else in your family as to how this may effect them.

The hardest thing about concurency is not knowing if the baby will stay or go and the HARDEST bit of it all is saying "GOODBYE"

Like I said before we were the first to experience a baby being returned in England and no support or help was there for us to get through this.

The day she left a part of me went with her also, I can still remember the day so clearly BUT i do not want to type it as I will not only upset myself but also the lovely ladies who have got to know me over the years on this wonderful site....we all feel each others pain at some point in our journeys and they helped me a lot when i was struggling to cope with finding something of the babies 3 years later which i thought had gone!

As for the money side of things we were paid an allowance for travelling But Fiona know s more about what you can or cannot get these days............hers is a happy ending and I am so pleased and privileged to know Fiona and help her go through concurrency that she deserved to keep HER baby!

Don't think I may have helped BUT hopefully I have given you a different side of the story.......one thing I will say is it is good for the babies as they do not have lots of moves But its hard for the carers!

PM if you want to know more!

Andrea
x


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## MIMI4 (Feb 16, 2007)

Thanks so much for your replies. 

Yes Maisiek we are still unsure as I know it could be hard but I also know that we don't know how difficult it would be until we had to return a child, I try to imagine but it's impossible.  We are going to book the sw to do a home visit to discuss it further. I spoke to a different sw last week on the phone and she was lovely and VERY keen as there are not many people offering to do concurrency in our area. I asked her about the percentage of returns and she said they have not had a child returned to bp yet, but this could change as they are looking at involving the extended families of the children more. So thats something to take on board.

Thanks Superal thats exactly what I wanted someone to write, a very honest experience! I felt your sadness and I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to do this but we definately want to look into it further. If not it will be the usual adoption route.

I do keep trying to remind myself that it would be fostering with the possibility of a huge bonus at the end, however, having suffered with IF for yrs and a m/c, at times I thought 'why would you even consider concurrency??' We also have a little boy, 6 yrs but are fortunate enough to have family around too to do the school run. Saying that we gave up ttc as I thought it was getting too much for him because I was so low. Obviously we wouldn't want anything to distrupt his life unecessarily but I think eventually having a sibling by whatever means would be fantastic for him.

Thanks again, it's given us a lot more to add to our list of questions for the sw!

MIMI4


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## superal (May 27, 2005)

Hi

I have replied to your PM BUT just wanted to add that SW should already be looking at extended family NOW for concurrency babies/children as well....they did this with us 9 years ago so its not something new.............just htought I would add that.

We met the babies grand mother and she told us she would rather the baby live with us than her own son and his girlfriend and she could not possibly look after the baby but she wanted to meet us to give her blessing.........really sweet of her BUt the baby went back!!!


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2009)

We started by fostering although we didn't offically do concurrrency.  

We were approved as respite and short term foster carers in May 2005 and that summer had various children placed with us for respite care.  However we found the giving back really tough and decided we were not cut out to foster in the longer term.  I was at college so decided to give fostering a break until I finished the next summer.  At the end of the summer we had three children for a one off weekend (we were only approved for two!).  However a few weeks later the same three children needed emergency respite again so we had them and then we had them for a week at New year and every six weeks after that.  At this stage we were still hoping for our own chidren - in fact we did IUI the first summer and IVF the second.  As we came to the end of our fertility journey, the kids were looking for a permanent home, so we asked if we could adopt them.  We were re-assessed and they were placed almost a year ago and as they say the rest is history........  

For us it was the right route - its been a tough year but without the fostering experience first I don't think we would have coped.  And althogh we never would have considered adopting three, we think its bee the right decision for us.  

Hope you can fidn the right path for you

Bop


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## maisiek (Apr 25, 2005)

Hi again,

Your SW sounds great, and the news re returns sounds promising.  We have been tying ourselves up in knots about what to do for the past few weeks but we have now finally decided to go ahead with the concurrency.  We are just waiting for our one year follow up medicals to be sent to the medical assessor for updating and then we will go ahead.  Quite exciting but scary.  When I was telling a friend about it and our fears regarding the uncertainty she was a real help and reminded me that life is full of risks anyway.  I hope this doesn't sound trite but it really helped to put things into perspective for me.  So we are going to take a risk and hope it works, if it doesn't then at least we will know that we have made a real difference to that baby during a really vulnerable period of her life.  I think that it is such a lovely thing to do for a child/baby, especially when you hear in the news all the horrible cases lately.  On our concurrency course we were told that if it doesn't work out that we could stay on the concurrency register and try again if we wanted or if we felt that we couldn't cope with it again that we could just go back onto the normal adoption route.  So i feel as if there are other possibilities.

Good luck with your SW visit.  

Best wishes,

Maisiek x


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## fiona1 (Feb 2, 2005)

Hi, just got back from holiday and jet lagged so will be quick,

Ours was a very positive experiance as Superal said, our baby came to us only days old and we have now adopted him/her. Concurrecny is VERY hard, I too have child care (Social Work) experiance and I have to say I think it help when building relations with the BP as I had seen many a similar situation from a BP point of view, however the stress when the decision time is approaching is horrendus, Supreal and I exchanged many e-mails and she was a great support  

I have seen both sides of Concurrecny and if your not one of the lucky ones words can't describe how hard it is, but that's the risk you take, if the outcome goes the way you want it then it is obviously well worth the stress.

Let me know if you want more info.

Fiona


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