Our focus has to be to find homes for those children currently looked after by Redbridge who need adoptive homes. These children tend to be: older children (the placement of babies under twelve months is quite rare); more than one child from the same family who need to be placed together; children with special needs, such as those who display challenging behaviour, have a learning or physical disability or a combination of these.

For the foreseeable future, we will not be running any general preparatory training courses for prospective adopters. Rather we attempt to match the profiles of the children we are aware need or will need permanent homes with prospective adopters who have expressed an interest in adoption.

We need more prospective adoptive parents who are prepared:

• to adopt toddlers or older children who may have some emotional difficulties (there are very few babies under a year old needing adoption).

• to adopt groups of brothers and sisters together or to maintain contacts with full or half brothers or sisters living in different families.

• to maintain established contacts with parents and wider family, where appropriate.