Meet the panel!

Although agencies make decisions about whom to approve or not, they are guided in this by recommendations made by a group of people who come together to form an adoption or fostering panel. The role of panels is an extremely important one within agencies: they provide expert advice, make important recommendations, and also contribute to the development of policies and procedures. All adoption agencies, both local authority and voluntary, are required to have adoption panels (though they can share them) and are governed by a number of regulations. Adoption panels of local authorities have three main functions:

• they make recommendations regarding adoption plans for children; they may also give advice on contact or other arrangements
• they consider whether families are suitable to become adopters (‘being approved’)
• they make a recommendation as to whether a child or group of brothers and sisters should be placed with a particular family (‘matching’).

Voluntary agencies panels can only approve adopters.

The panel’s recommendation must be taken into account by the agency when making its decision.

Fostering panels exist in a similar way in local authorities and in many independent and voluntary agencies. Most of the requirements for fostering panels mirror those of adoption panels, but there are important differences.

All agencies in the UK have panels: the different legislative systems in each country result in variations between them, but they are broadly the same.

Who’s on the panel?

Adoption panels are made up of people with diverse and relevant experience – personal and professional – to deliberate on complex tasks while retaining objectivity. Panels must be chaired by someone who is independent of the agency. They must also include members independent of the agency, who will often be people with personal experience of adoption – an adopted person, an adoptive parent or a birth parent who has placed a child for adoption – as well as a medical adviser and an elected member (local authority), or director or manager (voluntary adoption agency), and social work members.

Similarly to adoption, every fostering agency has its own fostering panel (though a few share theirs with a neighbouring agency). Panel members will have professional and personal experiences of fostering and may include very experienced social workers, foster carers or people who have grown up in foster care, and representatives from the local community, such as councillors. Legal and medical advisers help them in the decision-making process (though they are not necessarily members).

How does the panel work?

Adoption and fostering panels meet on a regular basis to give in-depth consideration as to whether a family can be approved as a foster carer or adopter, or matched with a particular child or group of brothers and sisters. No-one is on a panel forever, and there are guidelines as to how long people can serve on one.

Adoption

Panel members will be given your assessment report and, based on this evidence and information gathered during panel, will consider your particular strengths and limitations. They will look at areas such as your motivation to adopt and your expectations; your relationships and your support network; any health issues; how prepared other children in your family are; and what positive sense you have of your cultural, ethnic and linguistic heritage and identity. They will also look at how you can best meet the needs of a child or group of children. Panel members will also consider preparation and training that you have had or are likely to require to become adopters, as well as support: what has been available to you, and will be once a child has been placed with you?

At the end of this process, the panel will make a recommendation as to whether you are suitable to adopt. They may also give advice about the number of children you can adopt, their age range, gender, likely needs and background. After the panel has made its recommendation, a senior officer in the agency (the ‘decision-maker’) considers whether or not to approve you as an adopter. If they decide not to approve you, they will need to let you know in writing.

Fostering

The process for fostering is similar (the panel will work on information contained in your assessment report). When the panel has reached a decision, they then make a recommendation to a senior member of the fostering agency. It is this senior person in the agency who makes the ultimate decision, based on the recommendation made by the panel. This agency decision-maker will write to you with their decision. Your social worker will explain to you why the panel has made its recommendation and will discuss this with you.

Attending panel

You will be invited to attend the panel meeting when you are considered for approval as a foster carer or adopter. Most people choose to be there and are glad to have done so, even if they were very nervous at the time! Panel members have also found the experience of meeting prospective adopters or foster carers helpful, even though their recommendations will be mainly based on the written reports presented. If you do decide to attend, your social worker or a manager should work with you to ensure that you are well prepared and given information on who will be present and their roles, and also on the panel process.

Many panels formulate their questions and then invite either the social worker in first, and then the prospective adopters, or both in together. You will usually be asked to leave while panel members reach their recommendations. You may be told the recommendation immediately or your social worker may do this later, though this is less usual.

Many agencies will also invite prospective adopters to attend when a match with them is being considered. For foster carers, this happens less frequently.

What happens next?

The majority of people who go to panel are approved, because most issues should have been worked through during the assessment period, and it is unlikely that anything new will come up on the day. However, if the panel’s recommendation is not to approve you, there are formal processes that exist where you can make representations, for instance the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM) in England, which has been set up to review such cases. These processes are different for fostering and adoption, and your agency will be able to advise you.

If you have been approved by a local authority, they will consider you carefully for their waiting children. If there are no suitable children with your agency, they will usually want you to wait for one of their children – or for a child from the local consortium of agencies they may belong to – for three months, before responding to children featured in family finding magazines such as Be My Parent. That’s because they have in effect “invested” a lot in you with the preparation, training and assessment stages, and would ideally like to match you with one of their own children.

If your agency is a voluntary one, they will help you to find a child. They will encourage you to respond to children in Be My Parent and other media and will usually consider children over a wider geographical area.

At this stage, you will have gone through one of the most difficult parts of the journey, so why not take the time to celebrate and congratulate yourself for all the hard work you have done so far? You and your social worker can now work together to find the children who best fit within your family, according to the panel’s recommendations, and the next time you will be ‘going to panel’, it will be to be matched with a child!

Isabelle Rameau

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in July 2007.

Have you seen our answers to common questions such as What happens if I am not approved?

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.

Last updated: 05 December 07

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