Manchester charity achieves milestone for children in care

That same local charity still leads the way in this groundbreaking method of putting children first with the continued work of Manchester Adoption Society’s Goodman Team.

For young children, the experience of being in care can be traumatic, often fraught with several moves before they are placed with their permanent family.
Concurrent planning seeks to avoid the emotional and behavioural damage young children suffer whilst waiting in care by preparing families to foster and adopt simultaneously.

Children (aged birth to 6 years) are placed with carers who will support a child with a view to the child returning back to their birth family.

But where this does not happen, the child remains with the carers and is adopted by them.

Specialist social workers provide intense support to birth parents to make sure that they are given every chance of being reunited with their child, they are treated with dignity and respect, and are included in the process.

Manchester Adoption Society piloted the country’s first concurrent planning project locally with support from Salford and Bury social services departments for three years, until 2001.

Since then, it has been an independent team and has successfully placed 44 children through concurrent planning, six of whom were reunited with birth relatives after the courts agreed it was in the children’s best interest.

Building on from the success in Manchester, concurrent planning teams have been established in London, Brighton and Hove, Devon and Kent.

The Goodman Team is also advising a new project about to be established in the East Midlands– which will be only the second of its kind North of London.

Manchester Adoption Society is preparing to mark the 10th Birthday of the Goodman Team and concurrent planning in the UK, beginning with a press launch at the Goodman Team’s offices at Mocha Parade, Lower Brougton, Salford 28th April at 11:30.

Madame Mayor Valerie Burgoyne (Salford) will be in attendance to show the continued local support for concurrent planning in addition to a couple who went on to adopt after the courts decided the children’s birth parents were unable to look after them. For more information, please contact Terri Torevell on 0161 773 0973.

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Press Release Contact: Terri Torevell
Tel: 0161 773 0973
terri.torevell@manchesteradoption.com