Case study: finding a match early for 3 siblings

Ana Parr, Adoption Performance Lead at the London Borough of Bromley, explains how Link Maker helped reduce delay

The London Borough of Bromley's normal means of family-finding includes the National Adoption Register, Link Maker, the different specialized magazines and their online services, as well as circulating the children's profiles with the other members of the Consortium and attending Exchange Days.

Using Link Maker has provided practitioners with the option of reaching out to potential adopters on the same day of the children's profile being typed up and added to the website. With the pressures to avoid delay for the children in care, Link Maker has helped us with instant publication of the material avoiding any time gaps.

With the pressures to avoid delay for the children in care, Link Maker has helped us with instant publication of the material avoiding any time gaps.

Earlier last year, our Agency Decision Maker ratified the plan for 2 siblings – aged 5 and 18 months – to be placed for adoption. A couple of months later their younger sibling, who was 2½ months at the time, joined them, and the Agency Decision Maker approved the plan for the little one to be placed for adoption, together with his older siblings.

In Bromley, we had only placed one sibling group of 3 in the last 5 years and these children had been adopted by their foster carer. According to the Statutory Guidance on Adoption 2014, adoption agencies need to start family finding for children as soon as adoption becomes the plan. With that in mind we started family finding for the children around the time of an Issues Resolution Hearing.

We did not have any suitable families in-house or in the consortium at the time and we were unable to refer the children to the Register. We created anonymised, brief profiles of the children which we then used to start family finding.

Link Maker provided the option to look at the available families at any given time, using different search criteria.

The only search available from the Adoption Register generated a very brief overview of families who were available, but without having the option of finding out more detail about these families. We were not able to look at the adopters' profiles before we referred the children to the Register, which we could not do without a placement order. Link Maker provided the option to look at the available families at any given time, using different search criteria.

We created an anonymised profile for the children on Link Maker in the summer of 2014. As we did not have legal consent to advertise the children, we carried out regular searches on Link Maker and approached families about the children. Unfortunately, the families showed little or no interest in the children until a couple of months later, when the profile of a couple came up who wished to find out more. At this stage we could not share much more than the initial profile, due to the case being in care proceeding and not wishing to pre-empt the outcome of court. The family had on some level made a connection with the children (all 3 together) without having seeing any photographs of the children or knowing their real names. From the family's profile we thought they could be a good match for the children.

The placement order for the children was granted late 2014.

While we were exploring this family, other families on Link Maker also expressed an interest in the children following their profile being updated and photographs uploaded late 2014, which provided us with other potential families that could also be considered for the children.

We believe that the early family-finding made a huge difference in this case, ensuring the timescale from placement order to placement was only 4½ months, with Link Maker providing the platform for this.

We visited families very quickly after the final hearing. Information continued to be shared to ensure the families fully took on-board the likely challenges with such a large sibling group in very different stages of development and different levels of need. The match was taken to panel early 2015 and the children were placed at the end of March 2015, following well-planned introductions. The children have settled extremely well with their family.

We believe that the early family-finding made a huge difference in this case, ensuring the timescale from placement order to placement was only 4½ months, with Link Maker providing the platform for this.

Visit the London Borough of Bromley's adoption webpage