BABIES IN CARE DESERVE LOVING AND STABLE FAMILIES
02 November 2009
For immediate release
Monday 2 November 2009
The children’s charity, Coram is today (Monday 2 November), calling upon more local authorities across the country to take up concurrent planning – a child centered approach for babies in care. The programme places babies with foster carers while their future is being decided by the family courts. Babies who cannot return to their birth parents are adopted by these foster carers – reducing disruption to their early lives.
At a conference this evening Coram will celebrate ten years of preventing babies from drifting in the care system. Many of these babies would have had a traumatic start in life. A high proportion of their birth parents are wrestling with drug or alcohol misuse and the babies themselves may need to be detoxified. These babies need stability from the start – including during care proceedings. The scheme known as ‘Concurrent planning’ provides this stability for these vulnerable babies and speeds up the time it takes for permanent solutions to be found.
Specialist foster carers look after their children while also taking the baby for regular contact visits with their birth parent/s. These sessions are supported by a contact supervisor who provides a reliable familiar face at a time that can be very intense and stressful. If the courts decide that the baby cannot be returned to the birth parent the baby does not have to undergo further moves and disruption as the same foster carers adopt them.
Currently Coram works with four London Boroughs to provide Concurrent Planning for babies in their care – Harrow, Camden, Islington and Hammersmith and Fulham – Coram is urging more local authorities consider this approach.
Jeanne Kaniuk, Head of Coram’s Adoption & Permanent Families Service, says:
“We applaud the London boroughs we work with that are placing children through Concurrent Planning. Coram’s ten years experience of Concurrent Planning shows decisions regarding the care of emotionally fragile babies are resolved without increased disruption to their lives. They are able to form bonds with their carer at a crucial point in their development. Every baby deserves loving and stable families and we would like to see this approach taken up more widely.”
Concurrent Planning was developed in the USA in the 1980s to reduce drift for young children in the care system before permanent placement. Seen as a ‘win/win’ situation for the child it is a scheme in which both rehabilitation to birth parents and adoption are worked on concurrently, with intensive resources deployed for each alternative. The child meanwhile lives with foster carers dually approved as prospective adopters, while at the same time having regular contact with birth parents. Coram’s Concurrent Planning Project was established in1999. Coram is the only adoption agency providing Concurrent Planning in London and one of five providers of the service nationally.
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For further media information, or to attend the event, please contact Roberta Goldstein on 020 7520 0346 or email Roberta@coram.org.uk
Notes to editor
Coram works with over 10,000 vulnerable children, young people and their families every year. Its adoption service has the highest success rate in the country. (3% disruption rate against a national average of 20%) Coram concurrent planning has been running for 10 years and is the only agency in London providing the service. The charity currently works with four London Boroughs – Harrow, Camden, Islington, Hammersmith and Fulham. www.coram.org.uk
Coram will deliver a conference on Concurrent Planning at The Foundling Hospital, London on Monday 2 November at 4.30pm. Speakers include Jenny Kenrick, Honorary Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Danya Glaser, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at GOSH, Judge Lesley Newton from Manchester County Court and Margaret Adcock, social worker consultant to the concurrent planning projects in the UK.
