Wiltshire Council

Introduction

On average, 20 Wiltshire children a year become adopted and these are mostly children aged between 2 and 10.

Adoptive families are particularly needed for:

• School aged children up to the age of 10
• Sibling groups
• Children from black and ethnic minority backgrounds
• Children with special needs/disabilities

Why do children need to be adopted?

Children usually need adoption when they are unable to live safely with their birth families. This may happen because of the birth parents serious misuse of drugs/alcohol; serious mental illness or severe learning disability; all of which can result in children being abused and/or neglected.

Services will always be offered to the families to try and support them and enable them to care for their children and it is only when it becomes clear this is not working, that adoption will be considered for some children.

There are also a very small number of birth mothers who give up their babies for adoption at birth but the numbers of these ‘relinquished’ babies has been diminishing in recent years.

Contact with birth relatives

Adoption has become a much more open process than it used to be and nowadays it is very common for adopted children to continue having some form of ongoing contact with their birth relatives, even after they have been adopted. This might be direct, face-to-face contact but more commonly contact is maintained through the exchange of letters, cards, photos, etc.

Wiltshire Council provides an adoption post-box service, acting as the intermediary to facilitate contact between the adoptive family and the birth family, to ensure this continues to be in the child’s best interests and that it is a positive experience for all. For more information about the post-box service, please see Adoption support service.

Birth Parent Involvement

It is quite common these days for birth parents to be offered involvement in preparing the child for adoption (e.g. providing detailed background information about themselves) and in the choice of adoptive parents for their child.

Child’s involvement

The children themselves, depending on age and understanding, will be fully involved in the whole adoption process and their wishes and feelings will be ascertained and taken into consideration when important decisions about their future are being made.

The children are provided with a Children’s Guide to Adoption and this includes information about how they can make a complaint if they are unhappy about the decisions that have been made or the services provided.