What are the risks involved with EP?

For many years the social care system has looked for ways of securing placements for new born children at the earliest possible opportunity. For many reasons this is the very best way of ensuring a safe and loving environment for the child. Sadly however, this has led to a growing number of cases whereby the prospective adopters find themselves in a spiralling situation. This can happen relatively quickly, but equally can be drawn out over years, leaving adopters broken hearted and in many cases experiencing PTSD.

Below we explain the risks involved in EP Placements. It is important to know these before committing to a foster to adopt placement.

The child could return to birth family. With courts under huge stress and extensive backlog, birth families are being gifted much longer to put conditions in place in order for a return to their care. Although alot is done to avoid this, with EP on the rise, adopters are more likely than ever to be exposed to this outcome. Click here for statistics.
The child could return to a family friend. Alot of research has been undertaken to assess the long term well being of adopted children. The science shows that even with the most loving adoptive family, the future mental health of a child is benefitted by staying with birth family. If this can’t be achieved, even a tenuous link is seen as better than no link. Therefore, even friends of the family can come forward to be assessed.
There are no fixed time scales for completion of a placement. Many different things can happen during an EP placement. Standard practice within the care system stipulates that EP cases should be resolved within 6 months of a placement but this is rarely the case. With more time, birth parents, family and friends can even contest their initial assessments. If the Judge finds that their circumstances have changed they can be allowed another assessment, extending the time in your care even further.

You could be required to continue contact with birth family (if deemed appropriate) while assessments take place, no matter how long this takes. In some cases continued contact will extend beyond Maternity/Paternity leave. This can be very difficult to organise but is your responsibility as a Foster Carer. Contact can be once a week, equally it could be three or four times a week. This schedule can change regularly. Although these contact sessions are meant to be heavily monitored, this is when the most problems with EP can occur. Every effort should be made to avoid unsupervised contact with birth parents, but it is the experience of most EP carers that at some point something will go wrong. This could mean you become face to face with birth parents when you are not meant to.
If a return to birth family is decided, it is your responsibility to engage in a proper handover period to limit any stress caused to the child. This can involve travel, birth family coming to your home and extended periods of contact with birth family. Often, only the bare minimum requirements will have been reached by birth family. The term 'good enough' is used in these cases. It is essential for EP carers to think about whether or not they would be able to cope with facilitating a return to conditions which you may yourself deem inappropriate

Things to be aware of

There are a number of scenarios that you may not find out about until it's too late. While every effort will be made to inform you of these possibilities, the reality is that the system is so complex and each case so different that some things may be missed. Training for EP is getting better, but it is still in continued development.

You will receive little to no information while birth family assessments are taking place. Due to data protection, foster carers are not provided with information about ongoing assessments. This can lead to outcomes which could never have been expected at the beginning of the case. Although your own social worker will have tried to explain all the known risks at the beginning of the case they will not be able to predict the ongoing course of events.
While it may feel like your duty to advocate for the child in your care, in reality there is next to nothing you can do to help the situation aside from give the very best start you can to them. You will not be present in any court hearings, you will not have a voice in the hearings and neither will you have any access to what happens in court. This can feel very uneasy, most of us are used to being able to control our own destiny.
Sadly, there is little to no distinction between normal foster carers and EP foster carers. Your feelings and mental health are of no consequence to the judge, services or birth family. As cases drag on this can in some ways feel inhuman, with only your own social worker there for support. Bare in mind though that your social worker is only there to support you, they cannot control or input to the case.

In cases where birth family are still being considered you will be required to attend a regular Child in care review. This should happen every three months, but with cases now extending beyond the norm you could have to go to quite a number. These meetings are chaired by a child in care social worker and attended by the birth family, their social worker, your social worker and in some cases the court guardian. In these meetings you could be face to face with the birth family while they try to agree with all parties that the current care is suitable. This can be very daunting and depending on the nature of the birth family can be inflammatory. It is important to point out though that if there is any serious risk of danger you will not be subject to this. In some cases you will never be introduced.
Children in your care can be placed into a Community placement order. This is where custody is shared with the birth family to help with their assessment and determine whether or not they can cope with day to day life with a baby in their care. These placements can still be enforced after the baby has been placed with you. This could mean, for example, that the baby has half the week with you and half the week with their birth family. It could mean they leave your care completely and return after the assessment is finished. There really is no fixed way in which this can play out. There have been cases where this has been ordered a whole year into the placement with an eventual return to birth family after 18 months.
You have no legal rights whatsoever until the child reaches 1 year old. At 1 year old, carers can apply for a Special Guardianship Order. SGO's can be extremely stressful and costly. More information on this can be found here.