Specialist support for adopting siblings

With brothers and sisters often waiting up to 11 months longer than a single child for a loving, permanent family, ARC Adoption is encouraging more people to consider adopting siblings, helping to keep them together.

It’s understandable that many people who initially talk to us about adoption are daunted by the prospect of adopting more than one child, but they often realise during prospective adopter training, that there are many positives to doing so – not least for the children, but for the wider family too, and especially if the right support is available.

Our team has a huge amount of experience of working with children and families at ARC Adoption, as well as in previous roles in local authority, early years, educational and medical settings, which has greatly informed our need and desire to develop the holistic, wraparound support we provide today.

A big priority for the team is to ensure that our families always have swift access to support, in the moment, rather than sitting on a waiting list for assistance. And whilst we are there to support families with any challenges that arise along the way, a lot of the work we do is proactive and preventative in nature.

Sometimes the support that our family’s access and value the most doesn’t really seem like support at all - as it’s simply providing opportunities for families to check in and have a natter with us and other adopters in a relaxed environment while the children play and have fun. This creates a strong relationship that makes it easier to ask for help if a more serious need emerges down the line – and it doesn’t matter when this is, as our support is there for life.

Below is a more detailed outline of the types of support we are able to offer our sibling adopters at ARC Adoption:

• Dedicated Support Worker – each family is matched to a named support worker who will get to know your family, work with you on an ongoing basis and can be contacted directly whenever needed.
• Baseline Assessment – an initial assessment is completed for each child upon placement, to identify individual development and attachment needs early on, and enable us to effectively monitor their progress going forward.
• Direct Work with Families – our team of support workers undertake a wide range of direct work with families at home and other environments, able to make observations and offer advice, there and then. Our team can also draw on their varied experience and training to deliver a course of therapy such as Theraplay or suggest other practical strategies.
• Our In-house Clinical Psychologist – our team benefits from the expertise of our in-house psychologist to inform our services and provide input on individual cases where help is needed.
• Occupational Therapy – we also have access to a paediatric occupational therapist who we can consult for advice.
• Counselling – we work with Creative Minds who specialise in working with children and families dealing with trauma, abuse and complex needs.
• Adoption Support Fund – our team can provide assistance to access funding for additional therapeutic support to build family relationships between adoptive parents and adopted siblings.
• Training and Workshops – as well as helping to deliver mandatory adopter training on topics such as PACE, our support team operates an ongoing calendar of workshops to arm adopters with new useful information or help them brush up on knowledge of training they have experienced earlier in the adoption process.
• Support for Schools – at the point of adoption, siblings are often at or approaching nursery or school age, and we can work with schools and nurseries with guidance on how best to support adopted children in line with their needs, behaviours, past experiences and traumas.
• Adopter Support Groups – we facilitate various support groups; online, at our office and outdoors, providing opportunities for talking, sharing experiences and supporting positive mental wellbeing.
• Buddy Scheme – all adopters are also buddied up with an experienced adopter, when in Stage 2 of the adoption process, providing invaluable informal support from someone with similar circumstances to you.
• Children and Young People’s Group – this is a new group for adopted children to interact with each other and talk about adoption when the time is right. This can be at different times for siblings, and provide a useful peer group with people who have had similar experiences.
• Children and Family Activity Days – we host various events and activities on weekends and in school holidays, for children and families to come together, interact and have fun.
• Life Story Work – we can provide support in having difficult conversations with your children about adoption and their birth family, as well as provide access to ARCBOX, our innovative and child-centred digital life story tool.
• Friends of ARC – this is our private Facebook group for our adopters and the ARC team only, where we can share advice, tips, upcoming events and ask questions. It has become a really useful and popular forum.
• CATCH – all ARC adopters have free access to CATCH (fka the Adopter Hub) which is an online platform providing a wide range of resources, including specific training and resources related to adopting siblings.

“It has been over 6 years since we brought home our daughter and son. The biggest piece of advice we had was find a social worker you trust and get on with.  We had a fantastic relationship with Jill and the rest of the team at ARC.  They were informed, organised and pragmatic and were excellent in explaining the process and journey to us as well as the pitfalls and positives.

We've heard so many other experiences of other adopters and we were so lucky to have had such a supportive agency such as ARC.  Post adoption support has been brilliant - they have stuck by us through all the trials and tribulations of being adoptive parents and are always at the other end of the phone and wanting to help.”

Josh, adopted a brother and sister

We hope you have found the information on our support service helpful. If you are interested in finding out more about adopting brothers and sisters or would like to discuss your circumstances with a member of our team, we’d be very happy to talk to you. Simply click here to complete our enquiry form and we will get back to you at a convenient time.