Adopting siblings

Why this is what we do

Sibling adoption is the centre of what Jigsaw does, not a side speciality. Since we were founded in 2014, the overwhelming majority of the children we've placed have stayed with their brothers and sisters.

Sibling groups are some of the children who wait longest for adoption in England. Just over half of the children waiting are part of sibling groups, and they are routinely separated when families willing and able to take a group can't be found. Our work is to find those families.

Why keeping brothers and sisters together matters

When children come into care, their brother or sister is often the only person who shares their history — the only constant in lives that have lost almost everything else. Separating siblings on top of separating them from their birth parents is a second loss, and a profound one.

Children adopted together help each other settle. They share their experiences as they grow up. They have someone alongside them who simply understands. The research bears this out: siblings placed together generally show better adjustment and emotional outcomes than siblings split apart.

In England, just over half of all children waiting for adoption are part of sibling groups. They wait longer than single children, and too many are eventually separated because the families willing and able to take them on are in short supply.

If you want more than one child, adopt siblings together

This is the single most important thing we want prospective adopters to understand, and it's rarely explained clearly elsewhere.

Most people come to adoption in their mid-thirties to mid-forties. If you adopt one child first and plan to come back for a second a few years later, here is what you'll actually find: local authorities will not place a second child with you until the youngest child already in your home is around ten or eleven years old. So if you adopt a three-year-old at thirty-eight, you'll be approaching fifty before a local authority considers placing another child with you — and many adopters at that stage are no longer assessed as suitable for a young child.

Even where it's technically possible, the resulting age gap — typically eight or nine years between the two children — means they share much less of their childhood than siblings closer in age. Being six with a four-year-old brother is a very different experience from being thirteen with a four-year-old brother. The first is a shared childhood. The second isn't.

The only other route to a second child is if the birth mother of one of your adopted children has another baby and the local authority approaches you first. This does happen — but it's entirely at the local authority's discretion, the birth circumstances are unknowable at the time of your first adoption, and it's in no sense something you can plan around.

So if you ultimately want a family of two or three children, the safest, and often the only, route is to adopt a sibling group together from the start.

Common myths about sibling adoption

"You need a two-year age gap between the children."

Not true. Local authorities will not place children with anything close to a two-year gap, regardless of what you may have read online. Sibling groups are placed as they are — and the age gap can be very small, sometimes only a year.

"You should adopt one child first and see how you feel."

Well-intentioned, but as set out above, usually impossible to act on later. We'd rather prospective adopters know this from the start than discover it years down the line.

"Sibling adoption is harder, so it's better to ease in with one child."

Adopting siblings is genuinely demanding, and we don't pretend otherwise. But the demands are different rather than simply greater — siblings settle each other, share the adjustment, and bring an existing relationship with them. Many of our families have told us that they find that siblings in a group support each other and help each other settle in their new home.

"You're approved to adopt a specific number of children of a specific age."

Not in regulations, you aren't. You are approved to adopt — full stop. Some social workers write things like "approved for one child aged 0–3" into Prospective Adopter Reports, but this has no basis whatsoever in adoption regulations. Once approved, you can be matched with a sibling group just as readily as with a single child.

What you'll need

There's one practical requirement we have to be straight about: you'll need a spare bedroom for each child you adopt.

This isn't a legal rule, but it's a rule local authorities apply consistently in our experience. Two siblings means a three-bedroom home; three siblings means a four-bedroom home. We know this excludes a lot of people who would make excellent parents, and it's something we've written about elsewhere on the site.

Beyond that, sibling adoption has the same eligibility requirements as any adoption. You need to be at least 21, in stable circumstances, and able to provide a permanent home. There's no upper age limit. You can be single, married, in a civil partnership, or cohabiting. You can adopt regardless of sexuality or gender identity. You don't need to own your home, and you don't need a particular income.

If you already have birth or previously adopted children, the children you adopt will normally need to be meaningfully younger than your youngest existing child — typically by around ten years, for the reasons set out earlier on this page.

The process is the same

Adopting a sibling group follows exactly the same process as adopting a single child. One assessment, one approval, one panel. You're not asked to make a separate case for adopting siblings, and the timeline is no longer.

What does change is the matching stage. Because most children waiting are in sibling groups, families who are open to siblings tend to be matched faster, not slower. And because Jigsaw specialises in sibling placements, we're unusually well-placed to find the right match.

What it's actually like

We won't pretend sibling adoption is easy. Two or three children arriving in your home at once is a major life change, and children who've come through the care system bring their histories with them. There will be hard days.

What our adoptive families consistently tell us, though, is that the children settle each other in ways a single child never could. They have someone who already knows them. They share the strangeness of being newly arrived in a family. They have a built-in playmate, confidant, and ally for the rest of their lives. The challenges are real. So are the rewards.

Read next

The adoption process →

Adopting a baby or child →

Adopting older children →

Why Jigsaw →

Common questions →