Advice and FAQs
AFKA Scotland provides an advice service to our members, accessible by telephone and email. Upon receiving your enquiry, our multidisciplinary team will collaborate to provide timely, authoritative, evidence-informed and current information and advice. Our advice service includes:
- Scotland-specific advice on legal, health and child placement dilemmas, including enquiries relating to adoption, fostering, kinship care, and cross-border/inter-country adoptions;
- Access to research expertise through AFKA Scotland’s research team; and
- A FAQ section (see below) where you can find guidance on questions we have received in the past.
To seek advice, please call 0131 322 8490 or send us an email with your enquiry and we will get back to you.
FAQs
This section is currently growing and we invite members to please continue sending us your enquiries and we will respond with bespoke advice.
Practice FAQs
A standard interagency fee charged when adopters approved by one Adoption Agency are matched with a child in the care of another in Scotland was established in 2016. The interagency fee covers the costs of recruiting and assessing prospective adopters, matching, placement and supervision and support up to the point of the adoption order.
Interagency fees: additional guidance
Use of a standard interagency fee means that agencies can be confident that they can cover the costs of recruiting prospective adopters and continue to invest in this process even if the adopters are subsequently matched with children from outwith their local area. As well as ensuring the best interests of the child are at the forefront of any matching decision, this helps to maximise opportunities for children from across Scotland who require adoptive placements.
Level of fees
Fee levels will be uprated on 1 April each year based on the Consumer price inflation including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) measure of inflation for the preceding calendar year as published by the Office for National Statistics. Information on the new fees will be circulated by the Scottish Government and will be made available on the Scotland’s Adoption Register website.
Payment
The fee is paid as a single payment at the point of placement.
Components of the fee
Although charged as a single payment, the fee is made up of three equal components. The first third covers recruitment and assessment, the second third covers linking, matching and introductions and the final third is to provide support from placement until the granting of the adoption order – on the assumption that this will happen within 12 months of placement.
Placements that disrupt within the first 12 months
If the placement disrupts within the first 12 months, the agency for the adopter will repay a proportion of the final third of the interagency fee. The amount of the repayment will be determined by the date the child leaves the placement and will be calculated on a pro rata basis. If, for example, the placement disrupts after 4 months, the repayment will be 8/12ths of the final third of the fee.
Placements where the Adoption Order is not granted with 12 months
If the Adoption Order is not granted within 12 months, the adopters’ agency will continue to support the placement on a fostering basis and will invoice the placing agency monthly at a rate of one 12th of the final third of the fee until the Adoption Order is granted (referred to as ongoing support in the following table).
In acknowledgment of year-on-year increases in staff costs, the fee levels will be uprated on 1 April each year based on the Consumer price inflation including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) measure of inflation for the preceding calendar year as published by the Office for National Statistics. On 19 January 2022, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) level for January-December 2021, which was 4.8%.
For the latest update on these costs, see Interagency Fees Scotland – Scotland’s Adoption Register.
Sound checks and references are of key importance in assessing alternative family carers. They do not “stand alone” but are something which should influence the whole assessment.
Applicants to foster or adopt, or prospective kinship carers, will sometimes have lived or spent significant periods of their lives overseas, and/or may have been born abroad and lived most of their lives outwith the UK. This can raise particular challenges: for example, some countries may not have well-developed systems for checking criminal or social services records, leaving gaps in the available information. While it is clearly necessary to try to discover if information is held in another country that might make an applicant unsuitable, at the same time it is also important that an application is not unreasonably delayed, or a significant amount of time and resources are spent on that aspect of the assessment at the expense of other areas.
Agencies should have policies and procedures to help them with this aspect of decision-making which are flexible enough to allow judgement on a case-by-case basis given the wide variety of circumstances that can be encountered.
Where someone has lived abroad for a period and a decision has been made not to undertake or pursue a formal check where it does not seem to be available, this should be recorded within the assessment report.
It is also important to remember that a clear police check or certificate of good conduct, like a criminal record check, will only show that the applicant has not been cautioned or convicted of an offence and does not mean by itself that they are suitable for the role.
It can be helpful to contact the UK Embassy for the country to ask advice on how best to get police checks from abroad (for example asking the French Embassy in London for advice on how to get French police checks).
Process
A helpful outline is provided by Paul Adams in “Undertaking Checks and References in Fostering and Adoption Assessments” – Chapter 9 covers this area and also provides useable examples. (Undertaking checks and references in fostering and adoption assessments | CoramBAAF)
Where there are gaps in information
There are other avenues that can be pursued if a formal check is unavailable. Employer checks/references, ex-partner checks and personal references can be useful sources of information in these circumstances.
It is also important to keep in mind the wider picture which emerges from the whole assessment and whether there are other gaps, or it provides any other information that raises concerns. If not, this could mitigate against pursuing a check if the process becomes particularly difficult or long drawn out. If there are any concerns, it is better to err on the safe side even if this makes the assessment protracted.
Kinship carers living abroad
CFAB has produced a helpful factsheet for prospective kinship carers:
Intercounty Adoption
The Scottish Government website has useful information for prospective adopters who are considering adopting a child from abroad (Adopt a child from abroad – mygov.scot)
CORAMIAC Intercounty Adoption Centre is a charity who can support families living in England and Wales who wish to adopt a child from out with the UK Their website has useful information relating to Intercountry Adoption (Coram IAC: Intercountry Adoption Centre)
CoramBAAF Outbound Permanence Service (outbound@corambaaf.org.uk) offers an advice and information service to Local Authorities on Convention and Non Convention Adoption, Special Guardianship and Undertaking an Overseas Viability
Other useful resources
Where an applicant has served with the British Forces in Western Europe, it would be good practice to undertake a check with the organisation providing social services for them.
Before November 2014 this was SSAFA:
SSAFA Vetting Department, Queen Elizabeth House, 4 St. Dunstan’s Hill, London EC3R 8AD
0207 463 9316
Email: vetting@ssafa.org.uk
After November 2014 this passed to Core Assets:
Core Assets Children’s Services, British Forces Social Work Service, Saxon Mews, Saxon Business Park, Hanbury Road, Bromsgrove B60 4AD
Tel: 01527 57162
Email: childrensservices@coreassets
Children and Families Across Borders (CFAB) is the UK member of International Social Services and they have lots of useful resources and an advice line http://www.cfab.org.uk
PN 60 (2015) Undertaking Overseas Checks in Fostering and Adoption Assessments – No longer published by CoramBAAF but many agencies still have copies. The Regulations referred to are the English ones but there is good advice on weighing up the various considerations where there are gaps in information.
AFKA also hosts an Intercountry Adoption Community of Practice (Member only Forum) which meets three times per year. This forum provides practitioners with an opportunity to share their experiences, knowledge and develop good practice in matters relating to Intercountry Adoption. For more details contact info@afkascotland.org.
Each Order bestows Parental Rights and Responsibilities (PRRs) for a child on an adult who had not held these. They are both private law Orders under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. Any decision by a Court will be based on three broad principles, namely:
(i) The child’s welfare is paramount;
(ii) No Order will be made unless it is better for the child for such an Order to be put in place;
(iii) Have regard to the views of the child, taking account of their age and maturity as far as is practicable. The child must be given an opportunity to indicate whether they wish to express them and given an opportunity to do so.
Kinship Care Order
A person can apply to acquire some or all PRRs under Section 11 of the Act. Not every Order under S 11 is automatically a Kinship Care Order. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 S.72(2) defines who is a Kinship Carer as a person who, when the Order was made, was related to the child or had some relationship or connection with the child.
It may be that the Court, in granting some PRRs to the Kinship Carer will deprive another person with PRRs of some of their rights and responsibilities. For example, where a grandparent wants their grandchild to live with them but the child’s father does not, this then the Court can grant to the grandparents the right of determining the child’s residence. This deprives the father of this fundamental right that he would normally have.
Guardianship Order
Under Section 7 of the Act, where a parent dies they can “bequeath” to another adult any PRRs they held at the time of their death. Their intentions will have been set out in their Will or a signed specific agreement. There is no need for the Guardian to apply to the Court for these PRRs but the appointment will not take effect until accepted, either expressly or by that person acting in a way which demonstrates their intention to assume the role of Guardian. Someone may also apply to the Court to become a Guardian.
Where another parent or (anyone else with PRRs) to the child is still alive, their rights will not be altered by the appointment of a Guardian. This means that it is up to all parents and guardians to agree what is best for a child; where this cannot be done, the Court may make a decision about this. Under Section 11 of the 1995 Act, the Court can specify which parental responsibilities are imposed and which parental rights are conferred on the guardian.
Once a person becomes a Guardian under Section 7, this will continue until:
(i) the death of the child or Guardian;
(ii) the child is 18 years of age;
(iii) a Court terminates the Order under S.11 of this Act.
The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 specifically recognises the role of legal Guardians who care for children and the potential requirement of kinship care assistance for Guardians and those eligible children in their care.
The 2014 Act provides that a person who has been appointed as a Guardian under Section 7 of the 1995 Act in relation to an eligible child is to qualify for kinship care assistance. Kinship care assistance is also to be made available to the eligible child who has a Guardian.