Permanence Planning in Northern Ireland: A Development Project

Greg Kelly, Priscilla Haslett, Jacqueline O'Hare and Karen McDowell discuss a permanence planning project in a Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Trust. The project recruited and trained dual (foster care/adoption) approved carers and placed children with them before the children were freed for adoption. The carers who were recruited in the first year of the project (1999) are described, as are the early outcomes of the placements. All the children (n = 52) placed with the carers were subsequently adopted and no placements have disrupted in the three to six years since. The children were placed with their permanent carers earlier than in conventional practice. The carers, for the most part, thought the reward of having their child placed earlier and younger compensated for the anxiety and uncertainty generated by the legal proceedings to free the children for adoption. They were essentially people who wanted to adopt (three-quarters were childless couples) and the project provides positive evidence of the capacity of this population to offer ‘modern’ adoption placements to looked after children.