A new campaign encouraging people in the North West to consider adopting children has been launched. The Growing Families Together campaign, which is a joint venture of several adoption agencies across the North West, is particularly keen to encourage more people to explore adoption through Early Permanence.
Early Permanence offers stability for children
Early Permanence, also known as ‘fostering for adoption’ or ‘foster to adopt’, places children with approved families at the earliest possible stage in the adoption process. Early Permanence carers are approved as both foster carers and adopters and will initially perform the role of foster carer while the courts decide whether a child can return to their birth family. Should this not be possible, the child may then be adopted by the Early Permanence carers.
This approach reduces the number of moves children experience and supports better outcomes for children by offering them stability while decisions about their long-term future are made.
Such are the positives of Early Permanence that all local authorities are required to consider it for every child who enters care and cannot remain with their birth family.
Early Permanence prevents multiple moves
Sarah Johal MBE, National Adoption Strategic Lead for Adoption England, said: “Early Permanence is a child-centred practice that offers stability at a very early stage, preventing multiple moves and the associated trauma of separation from and loss of their main caregivers at often a very young age.”
Between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, 67 children were placed through Early Permanence by North West adoption agencies, with 54% of these children aged under six months when placed.
However, with 286 children in the North West currently awaiting adoption, the campaign hopes to encourage more individuals, couples and families to explore the possibility of adoption through Early Permanence.
The campaign hopes to use the real-life stories of those who have adopted children through Early Permanence to highlight the positives of the approach.
Contact with the birth family
Rachael and Paul, who adopted three children through Early Permanence, stated, “As there is direct contact with the birth family in Early Permanence arrangements, we are now able to talk about birth parents firsthand because we got to know them a bit during contact and can share anecdotes with our children.”
Another couple, Iqbal and Ayesha, who adopted their two daughters, the first of whom, Khadija, was placed with them at nine months old, praised their social worker for being “honest and reassuring” and allaying the many fears and concerns they naturally had.
Stacey, a solo adopter of her son Elias, explained how the chance to meet her son’s birth mother was a real benefit of the system: “I was a bit worried about hostility towards me as an adopter, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was a real benefit as it gave us a chance to get to know each other. She (Elias’ birth mother) feels comfortable that I’ve adopted him and it gave me the opportunity to know things about him that aren’t written down on a piece of paper. It also gave me the chance to get to know her, not just someone else’s description of her, and I even met his gran, which I wasn’t expecting.”
How to learn more
If you would like to learn more about this campaign and see more stories of those who have adopted children through Early Permanence, visit www.adoptionnorthwest.co.uk or watch the campaign film at https://youtu.be/XJOssc8K67o.
After a Press Release by AdoptionMatters.
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