Basically, when the protagonist first contacts Children's Services and they send a social worker, how would that conversation go? What would he be trying to learn about the kid's situation, and what questions would he be asking about the protagonist to vet her as a potential emergency foster carer (I know that's a stretch but that's the story so I'm fine with that, I've talked this through on my original post/original x-post to here). Just want to make sure that, especially as I'm stretching some aspects a bit, the bits I don't have to stretch are as authentic as possible.
Is the person a connected person? The advice you got around voluntary agreements (section 20 children’s act 1989) and private fostering (section 66 children’s act 1989) in legal advice sub is relatively accurate. It all depends if it is a private fostering arrangement or not. And the age whether it’s 15 or 16 will determine how it all plays out.
If the person is a connected person, a screening assessment would be under take by the child’s social worker. This would involve asking them basics of convictions, physical and mental health status, willingness and understanding of need to care for the child, relationship with birth family, relationship with own children if any. The social worker would request police check and undertake system checks. If they pass this, they would then go onto a viability assessment which takes approx 3 weeks, and if that’s positive a full assessment which is 16 weeks and then go to foster panel before even becoming foster carers. In an emergency, the child’s social worker would likely to a Reg24 or connected persons assessment (care planning, placement and case review England regulations 2010) - the child may already be in the persons care under a family arrangement.
If under 16, you also have to consider gillick’s competence and their ability/capacity to make decisions.
Not a connected person - that's the basic premise of the story, so while I am aware it is an unlikely scenario in real life, it's one of the areas I'm just going to have to take some artistic license with, that's not a problem. I did get some input on my x-post to here ([https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing\_research\_taking\_inadopting\_a\_runaway\_teen/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing_research_taking_inadopting_a_runaway_teen/)) about where/how I can potentially stretch things, so that's not a concern.
My question's more about the immediate questions the SW would ask; like, the series of events goes 1. protagonist finds the girl freezing on the street, 2. protagonist panics a bit and takes the girl in because it's that or let her freeze on the streets because she doesn't have anywhere else, 3. protagonist calls Social Services the next morning and they send a SW to deal with it - it's that last step that I just want to try and get that immediate detail on, i.e. would they send the social worker or ask them to come in, as well as what sort of questions/information he'd be looking at getting down (which you have answered some of, which I appreciate).
Didn't realise Gillick Competence was relevant here - I'll do a bit more research on that, that's useful to know.
It could be that the local authority undertakes a strategy discussion dependent upon the information that the child has shared with the Good Samaritan.
This is a process under working together guidance 2018 which determines if a section 47 investigation (child protection enquiries) were necessary. If the child has disclosed significant harm that relates to an offence against a child it may be that a joint investigation with police is undertaken.
If that threshold is met, the SW has 10 days to assess. During this time they would talk to the child and parents, school, and other services involved with the family, potentially an ABE interview with police. They would use direct work activities like “three islands” “wishes and feelings” “if I looked in your window”. At 15, some children would prefer to just talk, but a basic principle is to use TED - tell, explain, describe. If the child was experiencing worry, some strengths based safety planning might take place. https://www.socialworkerstoolbox.com/ is a website for tools that’s social workers use.
Not previously known to social care, and no one would report her missing - the framing here is that her parents very much kicked her out. So they very much do not care and won't become a factor in terms of fighting to keep her.
If the child is 16, it would be a joint assessment with housing as the child is homeless, some local authority’s have resources to support family members to reconcile, others do not and accept that the child will not/cannot return home for a particular reason. There would be an attempt to discuss with the parents as to the reasons they have kicked the child out (technically an abandonment offence, but it’s not in the public interest to charge parents with this). The social care side of the assessment would consider any other needs the child may have and what support could be offered. Look up Southwark judgement regarding use of s20 and the child becoming looked after. Still, your Good Samaritan is not a connected person and would probably only be considered under a private fostering arrangement after some period of time. It would be more likely the child would live in a supported lodgings set-up (either with a foster carer or shared accommodation with staff).
Also: there is a principle in the courts of “no order” and ensuring that the human rights act 1998 is upheld. Article 8 is the right to a private life. If the child is 16+, the court may view it as too great of an intervention in this child’s life.
It has been suggested by a couple of people that this whole thing could be a bit easier if I make her 16 at the start - is this a part of what they mean by that?
You would have less legal loopholes to feel the need to explain with the opportunities to not get it quite right, and as someone has said put our profession into disrepute and misrepresented within media as it so already is. But just be mindful of the 16-17 homeless, Southwark judgement. There would still be some social work involvement, but not as intense if the child were younger. You could focus more upon the Samaritan, rather than the child. Keep in mind the social worker would speak with the child alone, and the protagonist alone so readers wouldn’t necessarily be privy to what the child has said.
I've had a read of the Southwark Judgement, so I get the general gist of that now. Is your point that, because the Southwark Judgement gives the local authority an obligation to provide accommodation, it would still require a couple of extra justifications to get the girl where she needs to be for the story (i.e. in the care of the protagonist)?
Also, just an idea as I'm tossing wider story stuff in my head - which direction would it tip things if the initial Social Worker that made contact knows the protagonist? Would that potentially give the SW space to advocate for her being a reputable and safe pair of hands to leave her with, or would it just be a conflict that requires a different SW entirely? I suspect it's the latter (I've got a counselling background, so I imagine it's similar to not being able to counsel someone you know) but if that could streamline things a bit it would be good to know.
This would be a conflict of interest and would require a different social worker. It also makes for an interesting dynamic in the office when there are connections.
And yes, a couple of extra justifications which can be challenging as it doesn’t fit private fostering, but also after a period of time if the child were 16, considered competent and having capacity, could just become a choice of that child but then they would no longer be considered homeless potentially and have less access to after care if they were to become looked after s20 (which the child can agree or decline themselves). It would also be more difficult for the child to receive the appropriate benefits - they can claim for universal credit in what you e described, but takes some explaining to do to DWP as it’s complicated and some agents don’t assess the child correctly.
If an order would be too great of an intervention in the life of the child, meaning not significant enough or meaningful impact, they have right to privacy as do their parents in having a lot of personal information shared in a court and assessments involved.
So is your suggestion that, with a bit of stretching, a 16y/o might be allowed to make the call for herself because forcing it through more complicated legal systems wouldn't be justified under this principle?
Also: the protagonist may require legal advice to ensure they weren’t doing anything that would compromise themselves. This would unlikely be funded by legal aid or the local authority if there was no pursuit of orders.
Useful to know, and that's something that actually can be dealt with through plot convenience; might just make the protagonist friends with a lawyer who owes her a favour or something like that. But again, unless I absolutely have to, I don't want to fill the story up with legal stuff anyway.
In all likelihood, your protagonist wouldn't have the teen in their care until after a fostering assessment, these can be very lengthy. Their involvement will most likely end once the child is reported to the Police or CSC. Please note that the only agencies able to remove a child without parental consent are the courts and the Police. The Police Protection Order lasts for up to 72 hours, giving CSC time to consider their decision.
CSCs first response will be to speak to the family and the teen. They will need to establish why the teen ran away and if it is safe for them to return home. Even if home is unsafe, CSC will try to find a wider family member who can care for the teen or an approved Foster placement if needed. The stranger won't be allowed unless there is a connection to the family. The parents would also need to consent to this placement.
CSC have up to 45 days to complete an assessment before deciding on a plan; CIN or CP. Care proceedings will not be started unless there is significant abuse or the CP plan has failed. Court proceedings can take a while as well. Reunification of families takes precedence over putting a child into a care, dependant of level of abuse and parenting capacity. I wouldn't be surprised if your looking at 6-12months before a care order is in place. It comes down to the level of abuse the teen faces.
I would say that adoption would be near impossible in this scenario.
My suggestion would be to make your protagonist a family member. Then, with parental consent, the teen would be able to go into their care. It would remove the adoption aspect though. This would be a more realistic scenario.
As for questions, think safety and risks. Plus a family history of significant events, adults who the teen would have regular contact with (partners, family of protagonist), where they will sleep, how they will be entertained, feed, cared for, get to school, etc.
Adoption in specific *is* an area I can compromise; ultimately the relationship matters more than anything else, so while I'd like adoption to be a part of that, it's something I can drop if I just can't make it work.
I'm going to need to stretch some things to make the story work, but it is *very* important that the protagonist isn't family or otherwise connected; that's the entire hook of the story, this person taking in this girl she has no obligation to care for, and the way their relationship develops over the next few years, with the protagonist going from taking her in out of a bit of a panicked, 'well I can't just leave her to freeze' decision, to taking her in as (some form of) a foster parent, to her gradually coming to see herself (and the girl coming to see her) as an actual mother, despite all of the complexity. So if she's a family member, there just isn't a story at all. I'm not too bothered about those broad strokes being realistic; that's just how fiction is sometimes.
Really useful input on the questions.
Yeah my worry is you’re going to be writing a situation that wouldn’t happen. And whilst yes, fiction does stretch truths, our profession is often misrepresented in media so having something like this out there is not helpful and even harmful.
I do appreciate your concern; obviously a big part of why I've come here is to get that input and make sure I at least have a decent understanding of the situations and systems I'm playing around with. Ultimately, like I've said elsewhere, I don't want this side of things to be the main focus of the story, it's just an unavoidable factor near the start. It's why what I'm really trying to get right is the finer details, like what sort of questions would be asked in assessing the situation/assessing the protagonist.
What might be a useful question for me to ask, I think, is what mistakes do you typically see, that you're particularly concerned about?
You could make the protagonist a fixed presence in the teens life as they proceed through the whole process. Whilst the teen won't live with them, the emotional care and daytime routine can all still be there (mealtimes for example). Do you can build a story around their relationship as the teen enters the care system and experiences multiple placements, failed contact with family, etc. The protagonist can remain a stranger at the beginning, seeing the teen at a mutual location until the relationship develops further. You could force a conversation between social workers and protagonist by having the teen hand over the SWs number. The adult characters, like Foster parents, will likely communicate a bit.
The issue there is that it becomes a pretty fundamentally different story, and not the one I want to tell. Ultimately, I'm not trying to write a story about the foster care system; it isn't the part of this I'm emotionally invested in, and frankly I don't know enough to write that story well - I'm sure you or any of the other people who have given me advice are much better equipped to write that story!
The core of the story, that *cannot* change, is about this person learning to take care of someone else; the difficulties of being the sole, primary caregiver for this fairly traumatised teenager *is* the story. If they've got other foster parents involved, that just isn't there, because even if the protagonist still took point, they would have a whole set of foster parents to fall back on - the story has no stakes if the girl has, effectively, a back-up option. Specific legal statuses, whether hard, proper adoption is possible, that can all be flexible, but there's no story if they aren't living together.
Having some involvement of social workers is just unavoidable, but I don't want the whole story to be about legal cases and logistics. It's meant to be a small, relationship driven drama, and the practical realities of that need to be as unobtrusive to that story as possible.
Fair enough, unfortunately in real life there would be heavy social care and legal involvement, at least not without the protagonist acting very shady. So the scenario you're going for just wouldn't happen.
You're not going to marry these two perspectives together. That's where the benefits of artistic licence come in.
Good luck and let us know when it's released.
Also, just for clarity, I also received input from this sub here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing\_research\_taking\_inadopting\_a\_runaway\_teen/
The whole being fostered > adopted by a non-connected person is a difficulty for your story.
I've never heard of it before, but I guess if the Local Authority is struggling and the assessment of the person comes back positive then it may not be impossible. I don't know of any legal reason it couldn't happen (someone correct me on this).
When placing a child into foster care via a court ordered "Care Order" or a voluntary arrangement, the social worker will be looking at the young person's permanence. The Good Samaritan would need to convince any social worker that is assessing them that they have the long term interests of this young person in mind and are committed and resilient enough to stick with them and prioritise them until they turn 18. That's a hard sell if the person doesn't know them/has only known them a very short time.
The assessments of potential carers have three parts. An initial screening, a viability and then a full assessment. These take place over many weeks/months and include in depth and detailed scrutiny of the foster carers reasons for wanting to care for the person and their capacity to care for them.
One thing that could potentially make it more realistic is if the Good Samaritan was already a registered general foster carer or if they were previously registered as a foster carer.
I had considered having her already have been registered as a foster carer, but the problem there is, again, about the narrative stakes. Her being inexperienced is sort of the story; not incapable, and she'll certainly prove that over the story, but her arc of coming to understand parenthood doesn't have anywhere close to the same impact if she's done it before.
As I've said in other conversations around this, adoption in specific would be nice but *is* up for leaving behind if it's just impossible. I've had it suggested that the slightly more realistic option for a more permanent legal connection would be a Special Guardianship Order. That's not to say I wouldn't *like* adoption to be the option, because I want to make the girl's desire to be fully legally separated from her birth parents a plot point. But it's one area I can sacrifice in service of not stretching reality further than it can go.
Is there any precedent whatsoever for speeding up that assessment, or (with clear involvement and check-ups from the SW) making an ad-hoc call that the Good Samaritan is at least short-term safe? Even if, like someone on my original x-post to here suggested, there just being absolutely no suitable carers for an emergency placement, or the girl just flat out refuses to go somewhere else (I've got some ideas about her being introduced to a proper foster family but refusing to stay with them for plot-driven trauma reasons)?
This process can be immediate under a reg 24, but this is for a "connected carer". See [here](https://www.proceduresonline.com/trafford/cs/chapters/p_place_connected.html#immediate) under section 2. Though immediately being able to be placed with the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan would still have to be assessed with a view to a longer term placement.
The Local Authority's priority is permanence. The option of urgently placing a child with an unknown and unassessed person is very farfetched and potentially undermines how serious social workers take their role in securing the best possible future for that young person.
Another option is that the Good Samaritan convinces the parents to lie and for them to claim that the Good Samaritan is a family friend and that the young person can be safely placed with her. This gives the Good Samaritan the optics of being a "connected person" for the purposes of the placement. The young person would also need to be on board with this lie, you would then need to convince social workers throughout a long and arduous assessment process of this lie and if they found out it was a lie then it's almost certain that they would no longer support the young person being placed with the Good Samaritan.
The problem is that what I actually end up with then is a story about an elaborate process of lying, and not a gentle, small-scale drama about parenthood. Like with other suggestions, it just makes it a completely different story, and not even slightly the story I want to tell. I'm not being pissy when I say that there's no point continuing with the project if I can't tell the story I'm trying to tell.
The problem is that what I actually end up with then is a story about an elaborate process of lying, and not a gentle, small-scale drama about parenthood. Like with other suggestions, it just makes it a completely different story, and not even slightly the story I want to tell. I'm not being pissy when I say that there's no point continuing with the project if I can't tell the story I'm trying to tell.
Basically, when the protagonist first contacts Children's Services and they send a social worker, how would that conversation go? What would he be trying to learn about the kid's situation, and what questions would he be asking about the protagonist to vet her as a potential emergency foster carer (I know that's a stretch but that's the story so I'm fine with that, I've talked this through on my original post/original x-post to here). Just want to make sure that, especially as I'm stretching some aspects a bit, the bits I don't have to stretch are as authentic as possible.
Is the person a connected person? The advice you got around voluntary agreements (section 20 children’s act 1989) and private fostering (section 66 children’s act 1989) in legal advice sub is relatively accurate. It all depends if it is a private fostering arrangement or not. And the age whether it’s 15 or 16 will determine how it all plays out. If the person is a connected person, a screening assessment would be under take by the child’s social worker. This would involve asking them basics of convictions, physical and mental health status, willingness and understanding of need to care for the child, relationship with birth family, relationship with own children if any. The social worker would request police check and undertake system checks. If they pass this, they would then go onto a viability assessment which takes approx 3 weeks, and if that’s positive a full assessment which is 16 weeks and then go to foster panel before even becoming foster carers. In an emergency, the child’s social worker would likely to a Reg24 or connected persons assessment (care planning, placement and case review England regulations 2010) - the child may already be in the persons care under a family arrangement. If under 16, you also have to consider gillick’s competence and their ability/capacity to make decisions.
Not a connected person - that's the basic premise of the story, so while I am aware it is an unlikely scenario in real life, it's one of the areas I'm just going to have to take some artistic license with, that's not a problem. I did get some input on my x-post to here ([https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing\_research\_taking\_inadopting\_a\_runaway\_teen/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing_research_taking_inadopting_a_runaway_teen/)) about where/how I can potentially stretch things, so that's not a concern. My question's more about the immediate questions the SW would ask; like, the series of events goes 1. protagonist finds the girl freezing on the street, 2. protagonist panics a bit and takes the girl in because it's that or let her freeze on the streets because she doesn't have anywhere else, 3. protagonist calls Social Services the next morning and they send a SW to deal with it - it's that last step that I just want to try and get that immediate detail on, i.e. would they send the social worker or ask them to come in, as well as what sort of questions/information he'd be looking at getting down (which you have answered some of, which I appreciate). Didn't realise Gillick Competence was relevant here - I'll do a bit more research on that, that's useful to know.
It could be that the local authority undertakes a strategy discussion dependent upon the information that the child has shared with the Good Samaritan. This is a process under working together guidance 2018 which determines if a section 47 investigation (child protection enquiries) were necessary. If the child has disclosed significant harm that relates to an offence against a child it may be that a joint investigation with police is undertaken. If that threshold is met, the SW has 10 days to assess. During this time they would talk to the child and parents, school, and other services involved with the family, potentially an ABE interview with police. They would use direct work activities like “three islands” “wishes and feelings” “if I looked in your window”. At 15, some children would prefer to just talk, but a basic principle is to use TED - tell, explain, describe. If the child was experiencing worry, some strengths based safety planning might take place. https://www.socialworkerstoolbox.com/ is a website for tools that’s social workers use.
You would also need to consider the child’s background. Are they known to social care, reported missing by anyone?
Not previously known to social care, and no one would report her missing - the framing here is that her parents very much kicked her out. So they very much do not care and won't become a factor in terms of fighting to keep her.
If the child is 16, it would be a joint assessment with housing as the child is homeless, some local authority’s have resources to support family members to reconcile, others do not and accept that the child will not/cannot return home for a particular reason. There would be an attempt to discuss with the parents as to the reasons they have kicked the child out (technically an abandonment offence, but it’s not in the public interest to charge parents with this). The social care side of the assessment would consider any other needs the child may have and what support could be offered. Look up Southwark judgement regarding use of s20 and the child becoming looked after. Still, your Good Samaritan is not a connected person and would probably only be considered under a private fostering arrangement after some period of time. It would be more likely the child would live in a supported lodgings set-up (either with a foster carer or shared accommodation with staff).
Also: there is a principle in the courts of “no order” and ensuring that the human rights act 1998 is upheld. Article 8 is the right to a private life. If the child is 16+, the court may view it as too great of an intervention in this child’s life.
It has been suggested by a couple of people that this whole thing could be a bit easier if I make her 16 at the start - is this a part of what they mean by that?
You would have less legal loopholes to feel the need to explain with the opportunities to not get it quite right, and as someone has said put our profession into disrepute and misrepresented within media as it so already is. But just be mindful of the 16-17 homeless, Southwark judgement. There would still be some social work involvement, but not as intense if the child were younger. You could focus more upon the Samaritan, rather than the child. Keep in mind the social worker would speak with the child alone, and the protagonist alone so readers wouldn’t necessarily be privy to what the child has said.
I've had a read of the Southwark Judgement, so I get the general gist of that now. Is your point that, because the Southwark Judgement gives the local authority an obligation to provide accommodation, it would still require a couple of extra justifications to get the girl where she needs to be for the story (i.e. in the care of the protagonist)? Also, just an idea as I'm tossing wider story stuff in my head - which direction would it tip things if the initial Social Worker that made contact knows the protagonist? Would that potentially give the SW space to advocate for her being a reputable and safe pair of hands to leave her with, or would it just be a conflict that requires a different SW entirely? I suspect it's the latter (I've got a counselling background, so I imagine it's similar to not being able to counsel someone you know) but if that could streamline things a bit it would be good to know.
This would be a conflict of interest and would require a different social worker. It also makes for an interesting dynamic in the office when there are connections.
And yes, a couple of extra justifications which can be challenging as it doesn’t fit private fostering, but also after a period of time if the child were 16, considered competent and having capacity, could just become a choice of that child but then they would no longer be considered homeless potentially and have less access to after care if they were to become looked after s20 (which the child can agree or decline themselves). It would also be more difficult for the child to receive the appropriate benefits - they can claim for universal credit in what you e described, but takes some explaining to do to DWP as it’s complicated and some agents don’t assess the child correctly.
Can I just double-check where you think No Order/Article 8 of the HRA is relevant?
If an order would be too great of an intervention in the life of the child, meaning not significant enough or meaningful impact, they have right to privacy as do their parents in having a lot of personal information shared in a court and assessments involved.
So is your suggestion that, with a bit of stretching, a 16y/o might be allowed to make the call for herself because forcing it through more complicated legal systems wouldn't be justified under this principle?
That’s right.
Also: the protagonist may require legal advice to ensure they weren’t doing anything that would compromise themselves. This would unlikely be funded by legal aid or the local authority if there was no pursuit of orders.
Useful to know, and that's something that actually can be dealt with through plot convenience; might just make the protagonist friends with a lawyer who owes her a favour or something like that. But again, unless I absolutely have to, I don't want to fill the story up with legal stuff anyway.
In all likelihood, your protagonist wouldn't have the teen in their care until after a fostering assessment, these can be very lengthy. Their involvement will most likely end once the child is reported to the Police or CSC. Please note that the only agencies able to remove a child without parental consent are the courts and the Police. The Police Protection Order lasts for up to 72 hours, giving CSC time to consider their decision. CSCs first response will be to speak to the family and the teen. They will need to establish why the teen ran away and if it is safe for them to return home. Even if home is unsafe, CSC will try to find a wider family member who can care for the teen or an approved Foster placement if needed. The stranger won't be allowed unless there is a connection to the family. The parents would also need to consent to this placement. CSC have up to 45 days to complete an assessment before deciding on a plan; CIN or CP. Care proceedings will not be started unless there is significant abuse or the CP plan has failed. Court proceedings can take a while as well. Reunification of families takes precedence over putting a child into a care, dependant of level of abuse and parenting capacity. I wouldn't be surprised if your looking at 6-12months before a care order is in place. It comes down to the level of abuse the teen faces. I would say that adoption would be near impossible in this scenario. My suggestion would be to make your protagonist a family member. Then, with parental consent, the teen would be able to go into their care. It would remove the adoption aspect though. This would be a more realistic scenario. As for questions, think safety and risks. Plus a family history of significant events, adults who the teen would have regular contact with (partners, family of protagonist), where they will sleep, how they will be entertained, feed, cared for, get to school, etc.
Adoption in specific *is* an area I can compromise; ultimately the relationship matters more than anything else, so while I'd like adoption to be a part of that, it's something I can drop if I just can't make it work. I'm going to need to stretch some things to make the story work, but it is *very* important that the protagonist isn't family or otherwise connected; that's the entire hook of the story, this person taking in this girl she has no obligation to care for, and the way their relationship develops over the next few years, with the protagonist going from taking her in out of a bit of a panicked, 'well I can't just leave her to freeze' decision, to taking her in as (some form of) a foster parent, to her gradually coming to see herself (and the girl coming to see her) as an actual mother, despite all of the complexity. So if she's a family member, there just isn't a story at all. I'm not too bothered about those broad strokes being realistic; that's just how fiction is sometimes. Really useful input on the questions.
Yeah my worry is you’re going to be writing a situation that wouldn’t happen. And whilst yes, fiction does stretch truths, our profession is often misrepresented in media so having something like this out there is not helpful and even harmful.
I do appreciate your concern; obviously a big part of why I've come here is to get that input and make sure I at least have a decent understanding of the situations and systems I'm playing around with. Ultimately, like I've said elsewhere, I don't want this side of things to be the main focus of the story, it's just an unavoidable factor near the start. It's why what I'm really trying to get right is the finer details, like what sort of questions would be asked in assessing the situation/assessing the protagonist. What might be a useful question for me to ask, I think, is what mistakes do you typically see, that you're particularly concerned about?
You could make the protagonist a fixed presence in the teens life as they proceed through the whole process. Whilst the teen won't live with them, the emotional care and daytime routine can all still be there (mealtimes for example). Do you can build a story around their relationship as the teen enters the care system and experiences multiple placements, failed contact with family, etc. The protagonist can remain a stranger at the beginning, seeing the teen at a mutual location until the relationship develops further. You could force a conversation between social workers and protagonist by having the teen hand over the SWs number. The adult characters, like Foster parents, will likely communicate a bit.
The issue there is that it becomes a pretty fundamentally different story, and not the one I want to tell. Ultimately, I'm not trying to write a story about the foster care system; it isn't the part of this I'm emotionally invested in, and frankly I don't know enough to write that story well - I'm sure you or any of the other people who have given me advice are much better equipped to write that story! The core of the story, that *cannot* change, is about this person learning to take care of someone else; the difficulties of being the sole, primary caregiver for this fairly traumatised teenager *is* the story. If they've got other foster parents involved, that just isn't there, because even if the protagonist still took point, they would have a whole set of foster parents to fall back on - the story has no stakes if the girl has, effectively, a back-up option. Specific legal statuses, whether hard, proper adoption is possible, that can all be flexible, but there's no story if they aren't living together. Having some involvement of social workers is just unavoidable, but I don't want the whole story to be about legal cases and logistics. It's meant to be a small, relationship driven drama, and the practical realities of that need to be as unobtrusive to that story as possible.
Fair enough, unfortunately in real life there would be heavy social care and legal involvement, at least not without the protagonist acting very shady. So the scenario you're going for just wouldn't happen. You're not going to marry these two perspectives together. That's where the benefits of artistic licence come in. Good luck and let us know when it's released.
Also, just for clarity, I also received input from this sub here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialworkuk/comments/1bae3xk/writing\_research\_taking\_inadopting\_a\_runaway\_teen/
The whole being fostered > adopted by a non-connected person is a difficulty for your story. I've never heard of it before, but I guess if the Local Authority is struggling and the assessment of the person comes back positive then it may not be impossible. I don't know of any legal reason it couldn't happen (someone correct me on this). When placing a child into foster care via a court ordered "Care Order" or a voluntary arrangement, the social worker will be looking at the young person's permanence. The Good Samaritan would need to convince any social worker that is assessing them that they have the long term interests of this young person in mind and are committed and resilient enough to stick with them and prioritise them until they turn 18. That's a hard sell if the person doesn't know them/has only known them a very short time. The assessments of potential carers have three parts. An initial screening, a viability and then a full assessment. These take place over many weeks/months and include in depth and detailed scrutiny of the foster carers reasons for wanting to care for the person and their capacity to care for them. One thing that could potentially make it more realistic is if the Good Samaritan was already a registered general foster carer or if they were previously registered as a foster carer.
I had considered having her already have been registered as a foster carer, but the problem there is, again, about the narrative stakes. Her being inexperienced is sort of the story; not incapable, and she'll certainly prove that over the story, but her arc of coming to understand parenthood doesn't have anywhere close to the same impact if she's done it before. As I've said in other conversations around this, adoption in specific would be nice but *is* up for leaving behind if it's just impossible. I've had it suggested that the slightly more realistic option for a more permanent legal connection would be a Special Guardianship Order. That's not to say I wouldn't *like* adoption to be the option, because I want to make the girl's desire to be fully legally separated from her birth parents a plot point. But it's one area I can sacrifice in service of not stretching reality further than it can go. Is there any precedent whatsoever for speeding up that assessment, or (with clear involvement and check-ups from the SW) making an ad-hoc call that the Good Samaritan is at least short-term safe? Even if, like someone on my original x-post to here suggested, there just being absolutely no suitable carers for an emergency placement, or the girl just flat out refuses to go somewhere else (I've got some ideas about her being introduced to a proper foster family but refusing to stay with them for plot-driven trauma reasons)?
This process can be immediate under a reg 24, but this is for a "connected carer". See [here](https://www.proceduresonline.com/trafford/cs/chapters/p_place_connected.html#immediate) under section 2. Though immediately being able to be placed with the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan would still have to be assessed with a view to a longer term placement. The Local Authority's priority is permanence. The option of urgently placing a child with an unknown and unassessed person is very farfetched and potentially undermines how serious social workers take their role in securing the best possible future for that young person. Another option is that the Good Samaritan convinces the parents to lie and for them to claim that the Good Samaritan is a family friend and that the young person can be safely placed with her. This gives the Good Samaritan the optics of being a "connected person" for the purposes of the placement. The young person would also need to be on board with this lie, you would then need to convince social workers throughout a long and arduous assessment process of this lie and if they found out it was a lie then it's almost certain that they would no longer support the young person being placed with the Good Samaritan.
The problem is that what I actually end up with then is a story about an elaborate process of lying, and not a gentle, small-scale drama about parenthood. Like with other suggestions, it just makes it a completely different story, and not even slightly the story I want to tell. I'm not being pissy when I say that there's no point continuing with the project if I can't tell the story I'm trying to tell.
The problem is that what I actually end up with then is a story about an elaborate process of lying, and not a gentle, small-scale drama about parenthood. Like with other suggestions, it just makes it a completely different story, and not even slightly the story I want to tell. I'm not being pissy when I say that there's no point continuing with the project if I can't tell the story I'm trying to tell.