Jargon explained

Don't be scared off if some of the terms we use are confusing. We've explained some of them below, but you can always give us a call and we'll be happy to talk through anything you don't understand.

Adoption
Adoption is when you become the legal parent of a child or children who can't live with their birth parents or other members of their extended family. It is a way of providing new families for children.

Adoption 22
An adoption consortium made up of the 22 local authorities in the north west and five voluntary adoption agencies. The consortium shares details of families approved as adopters and children in need of adoption. In this way we aim to place children in adoptive families as quickly as possible.

Adoption order
This is the court order that transfers all the parental responsibility for a child from the birth family and the local authority to adoptive parents, making them a child’s parent for life.

Adoption panel
Every adoption agency has to have an adoption panel. Our panel is made up of a number of people who have experience of adoption. We have an independent chair and panel members who work for Children’s Services as well as an adopter, foster carer, local councilor and the agency medical and legal advisors. The panel makes recommendations about whether children should be adopted, whether prospective adopters should be approved and whether specific children should be matched with specific adopters. These recommendations go to the assistant director for safeguarding who makes the final decision.

Assessment process
Before we can approve someone as an adopter we need to get to know you really well. You in turn need to make sure that you understand what’s involved in adopting a child and are ready for the challenge. In order to place the right child in the right family we need to understand both your strengths and your vulnerabilities.

Looked after children
Children who are looked after by the local authority. Sometimes a parent asks us to care for their child on a voluntary basis but more usually the child will have been removed from their parents.

Care order
If a child is removed from their parents, the local authority has to make an application to court who will then grant a care order, allowing the local authority to look after the child in partnership with parents.

Developmental delay
Many children who are looked after have some level of developmental delay but the causes and outcomes vary. Most people have heard of “developmental milestones”; the age by which children will sit up, roll over, walk and talk. Although there are variations between individual children most children will have achieved these tasks at around the same age. Some children however fall outside this age range and are said to have developmental delay. Because looked after children have often had difficult experiences in their early life many of them have not had the opportunities to develop these skills and once they receive the attention and stimulation they need they soon catch up with their peers. However for some children the delay has a different origin. For instance if a mother drinks heavily in pregnancy this affects the development of the baby’s brain and will have a long term impact on future development. Some children have birth parents with learning difficulties and these difficulties can be inherited and as with any child complications at birth and individual variations can lead to lifelong effects.

Fostering
Adoption and fostering are different. As a foster carer you look after someone else's child either for a short period or until they grow up. You never become a child's legal parent and their birth family always have a say in what happens to children. More about fostering.

Placement order
If it is in the best interest of a child to be adopted, we need the court’s permission which they provide by granting the local authority a placement order. When we place a child with adopters the placement order also gives the adoptive parents some parental responsibility until the adoption order is made, when they get full parental responsibility.

This page was last updated on 7 March 2011