Children's hearings redesign

I am now an adoptive parent however during the process we were classed as "potential adopters" despite being linked and officially matched with our child. We had no automatic rights to our child and had to arrange a pre-panel hearing to obtain relevant person status. This was upsetting as the council didn't automatically do this for us, and didn't seem like they could be bothered to do it. Luckily, we were adopting through a charity organisation who helped us through this process. The details you get in a children's panel is all part of their life story. To keep this from "potential adopters" isn't right as it is ultimately in their hands once the adoption is legalised to tell their child their life story.

For some reason a grandparent can also be a relevant person. I think this is irrelevant especially if they went through the Kinship Care process and were deemed unfit to care for the child. We spent a lot of time rescheduling the panel Hearings because Gran was on holiday or was objecting to things. This interrupts the child's chance for them to have a forever family as soon as possible. Relevant person status should be automatically removed if they aren't deemed able to care for the child and should be automatically given to those "potential adopters" who are linked and matched with a child since the point in the Hearings was to get our child officially moved to our home.

Define what a parent is. There is a difference between a person who is a biological parent who birthed a child and then went to prison and has never cared for the child and a parent who has gone through a vigorous and lengthy process to adopt that child. It should be understood in my worldview that "potential adopters" are valid parents to a child they are trying to adopt but have no legal status to that child at all until the adoption is finalised even when they are living with us! This is a long time. For us, it was 2 years classed as 'potential adopters" masquerading as "foster carers" as there is no official category for potential adopters. This was an incredibly upsetting and frustrating time.

Yes.

If PRRs are removed from the biological parent and if biological grandparents are not actually going to look after the child via Kinship Care. Redacted text

If 'potential adopters' come into the process later on, would they miss this opportunity?

Give matched "potential adopters" legal status. And if relevant people miss the Hearing, that should be count towards removing them as a relevant person.

Give matched "potential adopters" legal status, If they can't have PRRs!

Adopters are the child's future. This includes them in these critical Hearings. This is a huge part of the child's life story. It is the responsibility of the adopters to convey this to the child at age and stage-appropriate times. Of course, they should be there and of course, they should have legal status!!!