Support and training
Once you adopt you are entitled to the same range of universal services and other support as any child.
We know that the right support is crucial to make sure that adoptive parents feel able to meet the needs of their child, not just at the point of adoption, but as the child grows and develops.
In most cases your assessing social worker will support you through the matching and introductions process.
After adoption is granted
You will have an allocated post-adoption support worker from the Fostering and Adoption Team who will create an adoption support plan with you to look at any support that you or your child might need, this may include:
- one-to-one support with life story work
- training in therapeutic parenting
- ongoing support with letterbox contact - this means the child will get regular (yearly, sometimes twice yearly) letters with other important people in their lives, all letters are passed through the Fostering and Adoption team
We know that speaking to others who have 'been there and done it' is really helpful when you adopt so we run regular support groups for adopters.
A support group timetable will be given to you after you've been approved.
Training before adopting
We believe that you can never stop learning about children so we expect you to complete required training in child protection and paediatric first aid before you starting introducing yourself to the child.
You would also have access to our annual programme of face-to-face training courses as well as online training that can be accessed at any time.
We will also pay for you to have a twelve month subscription to Adoption UK which provides lots of support and training to adoptive parents.
Find out more about Adoption UK.