Why Children Need Adopting

If children cannot live at home with their families, the Local Authority has a duty to look after them. This means that the children are placed with foster carers and may later be adopted.

There a number of different reasons why children need to be looked after by a local authority. A few of them include:

• Neglect or abuse by a family member
• Illness or death of a family member
• Drug/alcohol abuse within the family
• Relationship problems between parents or between parents and a child
• A parent's or child's disability
• Law breaking by parent or child
• Young, unaccompanied asylum seekers

Adoption is a way of giving a child the love and security of family life when they cannot live with the family they were born into.

It is a legal procedure in which all the parental rights rights and responsibilities are transferred from the child's birth family to the adopters. The child loses all legal ties with their birth mother and father and becomes a full member of the new family, usually taking the family's name.

Today, adopted children are rarely babies, and are more likely to be part of a sibling group, be of mixed ethnicity, or have special needs.

It is estimated that up to 5,000 children in the UK are waiting for permanent new families. Many are of school age and over half are in groups of brothers and sisters who need adopting together.

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