However much some parents love their children, sometimes they can’t look after them as well as they would like to. That means they need somebody else to love and look after them and keep them safe.
If you are being adopted, it may mean social workers have been worried that you and your brothers and sisters – if you have any – are not being properly looked after and may not be safe.
Because of this, they’ve asked a Judge to decide if you can go and live with foster carers while your parents or carers try to sort things out.
The Judge will decide if it’s safe for you to go back to your birth family. If it’s not safe, they might decide that you should be adopted.
Adoption means belonging to and growing up with a new family when you can’t live with your own. When they adopt you, your new family promise to love and look after you.
How adoption works:
- if the social workers and the Judge don’t think you can go home, they will start looking for a new family for you.
- your social worker will explain what this means and ask you what kind of family you would like to live with.
To make sure that you get the right family, it’s very important that your social worker learns what you think and feel about adoption.
They will talk to your carer to find out what you’re like at home, and to your teachers to see how you’re getting on at school, but the most important person to talk to is you. Your social worker will ask you about you.