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Balfour Beatty Building Better Future Partner Coram helps to change the law

20 July 2012 0 comments

Balfour Beatty

On Friday 6th July the Prime Minister announced the Government will change the law to make it easier for families to ‘foster to adopt’. 

They were inspired by a specialist programme run by Balfour Beatty’s Building Better Futures partner Coram.

Through this programme, Coram trains foster families who are also approved to adopt at the same time. If the courts eventually decide it is in the best interest of the child not to return home, the placement then becomes permanent. This means that a child does not have to move from family to family before a permanent home for them can be found. It is just one of a number of changes being made to the UK’s adoption system as a result of Coram’s expertise. They are helping to change the way vulnerable children are supported right across the UK.

Coram’s adoption service is part funded by Balfour Beatty through Building Better Futures. They work with some of the most vulnerable children in the UK, many of whom have had to endure the kind of childhoods no child should ever have to experience. Many of the cases they deal with are due to neglect and when the child’s home is not safe for them to live-in any longer.

One of the children Coram supported, thanks to Building Better Futures, was Skye:

Skye was 20 months old when placed with her prospective adoptive parents in the North of England. She was born withdrawing from heroin & methadone. Mum had used alcohol excessively during pregnancy.

There were concerns about Skye’s physical development, attachment pattern, and speech delay.  Because of these concerns, it had taken the Local Authority time to find a family for Skye, as a lot of families had said no to a placement given her history – so Coram became involved. Skye is now doing very well in her adoptive placement, with a growing attachment to the family. Her physical development is progressing well, as is her speech.

How you have helped to make a huge impact and transform children’s lives

Thanks to the direct funding Coram received from Building Better Futures last year, Coram’s adoption service was able to change the lives of some of the UK’s most vulnerable children. We’ve helped them to:

• find new parents and loving, permanent homes for Skye and two other children in care, ensuring they can feel safe, loved, and have the chance to succeed;

• provide therapeutic support to 10 young children, who were finding it difficult to overcome the trauma and neglect they had experienced, when they were even younger; and

• help 25 adoptive families build even stronger links together, providing them with the support they need to stay together as a family and thrive.

Building Better Futures also supports Coram’s schools-based service ‘Coram Life Education’, the UK’s largest children’s health education service.

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