Children who need adopting

We have children of all ages who need an adoptive family to care for them through their lifetime. These children come from a range of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, some are single children and some are in groups of brothers and sisters.

Children needing adoption will have been separated from their birth families at birth or in early childhood. Sadly most children needing adoption will have experienced some degree of trauma in their lives.

Our children have a range of needs, personalities, abilities and vulnerabilities, and some have significant disabilities or health needs too, but all our children need a permanent, stable loving home to enable them to be the best they can be.

We would love to find safe, loving, permanent homes for them all.

Sadly, children from minority ethnic groups wait the longest to be adopted.

It is important that our adopters can nurture and promote a child’s ethnic and cultural heritage as they grow up. This is so the child can learn more about their identity and where they have come from.

We have placed many children with adoptive families who represent the diversity of Buckinghamshire. However, we need more adopters either from minority ethnic groups who can encourage and reinforce a child's identity, culture and heritage.

Nearly half of the children currently needing adopting are part of a sibling group, meaning they are in care with their brother and/or sister.

Many of the children who have been adopted have been through difficult experiences and all have considered loss. For some, their brother or sister will have been the only constant in their lives.

We need more adopters to consider adopting more than one child to enable brothers and sisters to continue living together.

Adopting brothers and sisters together is rewarding and offers a lot of advantages including that:

• they stay together
• their shared experience can act as a comfort to each other
• it helps them maintain a strong sense of identity

We are looking for adoptive parents for children with more complex needs, including physical and learning disabilities.

All children deserve a settled living environment. We need adopters who can see children for the innocent, loving children they are, rather than a list of additional needs. These children especially need someone with the time and patience to help them reach their full potential.

Adopting an older child (usually 4 to 8 years old) means you will have more information on any health and developmental issues.

We need more adopters to consider adopting older children, and as a result, time matching families for these children will often be shorter.

The profiles below give an example of the needs of the children who we are family-finding for in Buckinghamshire. We are not actively family finding for any of the children mentioned in these examples.