A pathway from long-term care to adoption: findings from an Australian permanency programme

Children who hope to be adopted from the care system frequently experience delays, unproductive disruption in attachments and difficulties locating new families. This article seeks to contribute to the search for effective adoption practice by exploring an approach developed in Australia, whereby restoration and ‘long-term foster care with the view to adoption’ are undertaken intensively but sequentially. When the child cannot return home, adoption is one of the options considered but no decision is made until a long-term foster family is well established. While planning happens concurrently, placements never have dual purposes and are therefore different from what is known as concurrent planning.

This study is based on an internal agency examination of adoption records over a 10-year period. Open adoptions were ultimately achieved for one-third of those who entered long-term care, and the children had a wide range of ages and included sibling groups and those with behavioural difficulties. Adoption took, on average, 4.4 years to finalise but there was wide variation in timeframes, with younger children being adopted more quickly. Perhaps most significantly, a permanent placement was found relatively soon for children of all ages, as they did not have to wait for a family willing to commit to adoption or endure lengthy legal proceedings. The adoption was most timely when both restoration and long-term care teams were managed within one agency (albeit in separate programmes). Furthermore, permanent families were located for children for whom adoption ultimately proved to be inappropriate.