main content Family Placement Service

Bromley Fostering and Adoptions Teams (formerly known as the Family Placement Team) are part of the Council's Children and Young People Department based in the Civic Centre in Bromley.

Details

The Adoption Team covers domestic, inter-country and step-parent adoption; birth records counselling; post-adoption support; and counselling to birth parents who consider relinquishing a child for adoption.

The Fostering Team covers short and long-term fostering,  teenage fostering, and respite fostering and provides a duty service for social workers needing emergency placements for children and young people.

Each team is managed by a Group Manager but work very closely together.

We believe that every child should be able to experience a secure and happy family life, being parented by a loving adult or adults. Usually a child will have these needs met by their own parent(s) or within their extended family. Sometimes this is not possible, either for temporary/ longer-term periods or for the duration of childhood. This is where the need for foster carers and adopters arises.

At any one time about 300 children and young people are looked after by Bromley Council and many are in family placements. On average about 5% of children looked after by the Council are adopted each year and the majority of these children are placed with adopters recruited by the Adoption Team.

We have about 122 active foster carers in Bromley and we are providing support to 200 sets of adoptive families under various post adoptive support arrangements. We want to add to these numbers of foster carers and adopters so that we can make the best family placements and reduce delay for children and young people when they need fostering or are approved for adoption. At present the Adoption Team only has 4 sets of approved adopters waiting to be linked with children as we have been successful in matching children to approved adopters without undue delay.

In fostering we particularly need to recruit more local foster carers in order to keep children and young people connected to their own communities and to reduce the reliance on expensive independent fostering agency placements, which are frequently at some distance from the borough. We urgently need more Black African and African-Caribbean carers.

Next Steps

For more information on adoption and fostering our contact details are listed below or please select the Adoption or Fostering for Bromley links.

Contact Details

Family Placement Service, Joseph Lancaster Hall, Civic Centre, Rafford Way, Bromley, BR1 3UH.

Adoption Team:
Telephone:020 8313 4193
Fax: 020 8313 4086

Fostering Information Officer (Freephone):
Telephone:08000 288 298
Fax: 020 8658 5990
e-mail: Fostering.andAdoption@bromley.gov.uk