Adoption and Fostering

The Children and Families Department of the Velocity Interoperability Network recruits, assesses, approves and supports the adopters and foster carers of the Velocity Interoperability Network, and places with them the children who cannot live with their own families. At establishment 96 foster carers are approved, 61 children are in the care of the Department and 23 households are in assessment.

Fostering places a child with an approved carer while parental responsibility remains with the birth parents or with the Department. It may be for a single night, for a few weeks while a family is helped through a difficulty, or for the whole of a childhood. Adoption transfers parental responsibility permanently to the adopter and is made by an order of a court of the Network. Nine adoption orders were made during the transition period from 10 August to 5 September 2026.

The Department is short of carers for children over the age of ten, for groups of brothers and sisters who should not be separated, and for children with disabilities. It says so plainly because the shortage is the reason it recruits.

96

Approved foster carers at establishment

61

Children in the care of the Department

23

Households in assessment

9

Adoption orders made in the transition period

The seven stages of assessment. The same seven stages apply to prospective adopters and to prospective foster carers. Nothing in them is a test to be passed by rehearsal; the assessment is a written account of a household, made with the household and read by it before it goes further.

1. 1

   Step 1: Enquiry

   Write to the Department saying that you are interested in adopting or in fostering, and whether you have a preference. You are sent the information pack, which sets out what each involves, what is asked of a carer and what the Department provides in return.

2. 2

   Step 2: Information meeting

   An information meeting is held at your site within four weeks of your enquiry. It is not part of the assessment and you are under no obligation after attending. Serving foster carers attend and answer questions.

3. 3

   Step 3: Registration of interest

   If you decide to continue, you complete the registration of interest. The Department checks that you are over twenty-one, that you are resident in the Network and that you have a spare room for a child; it makes no other threshold requirement as to income, tenure, marital status or employment.

4. 4

   Step 4: Checks

   The Department checks its own safeguarding record, takes up three references of which one must be from a relative, seeks a health report, and visits your home to see the room the child would use and the way the household lives.

5. 5

   Step 5: Preparation

   Six preparation sessions are held over six weeks, covering the experience of a child who has been separated from a family, the behaviour that follows it, contact with birth families, the record the Department keeps and the limits of what a carer may decide alone.

6. 6

   Step 6: Assessment

   A social worker of the Department visits between six and eight times over about four months and writes the assessment report. You read the report in full and may attach your own written comments before it goes to panel.

7. 7

   Step 7: Panel and decision

   The adoption and fostering panel considers the report, meets you and makes a recommendation. The decision is taken by the Director of the Department within ten working days of the panel. A household not approved is told the reasons in writing and may ask for the decision to be reconsidered once.

How long each stage takes. The times below are the periods the Department works to. Where a stage will take longer, the Department writes to the applicant with the reason and the revised date.

Support for approved carers. Approval is the beginning of the Department's obligation to a carer, not the end of it.

A named social worker

Every approved carer has a social worker of the Department who visits at least monthly while a child is placed, and who is the carer's route to any other part of the Department.

A support allowance

Foster carers receive an allowance towards the cost of caring for a child, at a rate set by the age of the child and reviewed annually. The allowance is not a payment for the carer's time and is not taxed as income.

Training

Approved carers complete four training days a year, on subjects set by the Department in the light of what it has learned from placements. Training is provided without charge and time spent in training is treated as time in care.

Short breaks

A carer may ask for a planned short break of up to fourteen nights a year, during which the child is placed with a second approved carer known to the child.

The carers' group

Approved carers meet monthly at each site. The Department attends when asked and not otherwise, so that carers can speak freely about the Department.

The panel. The adoption and fostering panel first sits on 28 September 2026 and monthly thereafter. It is made up of a chair who is not an officer of the Department, two officers of the Department, an approved carer, and a person who was adopted or fostered as a child. Its recommendation is not the decision; the decision is taken by the Director of the Department.

Questions

Enquiries and registrations of interest may be sent to contact@children.gov.vin. For the help available to a family before a child comes into care, see Family Support, and for what the Department publishes about care and placement, see Statistics.