Adoption or fostering?

adoption

Adoption is a legal process by which all parental rights and responsibilities are permanently transferred to the adoptive parents by a court.

The child legally becomes part of the adoptive family, as if they had been born into it, usually taking the family’s surname.

Adoption has significant legal, emotional, psychological, and social consequences for the child, the adoptive parents, the birth parents and others.

fostering or adoption

Children who need permanent families might be already in foster care and placed with short-term foster carers.

If they are unable to return to their birth parents, the decision is often to place the child long term with foster carers or to look for adoptive parents, usually if the child or children are under five years of age.

 Whether fostering or adoption is for the child, most of the children will have been subject to abuse.

fostering

Unlike adoption, fostering involves shared caring, and the child remains the legal responsibility of the local authority and/or their birth parents.

Most children placed in foster care return to their birth families or move on to independence.

Where this is not possible, the local authority will look at alternatives, such as other relatives, or adoption or permanent fostering.