Category: Adoption Panel

Adoption Panel Chair

Frances Nicholson has worked as a social worker, mainly in Children and Families Services for 40 plus years in several roles.

Since the current Adoption Order became operant in 1989, I have worked in all aspects of adoption services, including placing children for adoption, assessing adoptive families, providing advice and support for birth and adoptive families pre and of post the Courts granting of Adoption Orders, and assisting adopted adults with access to their adoption records and reuniting with birth family members where this is requested and possible. Since circa 2005,I have also been involved in regional ,strategic input to policy and legislation in relation to adoption and children .Most recently I was the Professional Social Work Adviser as the Adoption and Children Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 had its passage through the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Over the years, I have presented the circumstances of children, families for approval and proposed placement matches to adoption panels, I have been a member of adoption panels and have chaired 3 different adoption panels. I strongly value the availability of the right, stable, caring, lifelong adoptive home for children who cannot be parented by their biological parents.

Together with my husband, who also was a long serving social worker, we parented 3 biological grown up children. We have learned to appreciate grownups sometimes welcome aspects of parental counsel too! Laterally we have enjoyed the arrival of 2 grand-daughters and a grandson. Thankfully they live nearby, and we can help with day care and in turn benefit from the attendant exercise routine, when their parents are at work.

In any spare time, I enjoy all types of music and will attend concerts and more recently rejoined a choir. Since retiring from the structure of a daily work pattern, I had hoped to increase time for reading, walking and Pilates but these hopes require further attention.

Panel Advisor

Qualifications:   BA; Diploma in Social Studies; CQSW.

Experience:   40+ years experience in adoption.  I enjoy working with people and making families.

What do you like to do in your free time?  Walking – often with my dogs, gardening.

All time favourite TV show? Grace and Frankie.

Agency Decision Maker

Lynda began her career as a social worker in 1971 with the Country Antrim Welfare in the Family & Child Care Team based in Lisburn.

In 1986, having been a Senior Social Work Team Leader in both Lisburn and South Belfast, she moved to Barnardo’s NI as a Project Leader to establish Northern Ireland’s first professional foster care service for ‘hard to place’ young people.

In 1987 she became Director of Barnardo’s Northern Ireland, a position she held until 2019.

Key milestones included becoming a founding member of Focus on Children, a member of the Washington Peace for Children delegation and addressing the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in 1996.

In 1997 Lynda was nominated as the Chair of the Victims Education Bursary by the Northern Ireland Office.

Lynda also acquired £7million inward investment for Barnardo’s NI from Atlantic Philanthropies to adapt, license and implement a number of evidence-based programmes to scale in the UK.

In 2006, Lynda was awarded the CBE for services to families and children in Northern Ireland.

Memberships have included the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland, the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership, the Atlantic Grantee Network (All Ireland) and various inter-departmental groupings.

Interests? Nothing too adventurous, travel, reading, cooking and eating.

Favourite TV show? This Is Us – of course about adoption and family history.

Medical Adviser

Dr Fiona Allen MB BCh graduated in Medicine from Queens University Belfast in 1987, trained as a GP achieving MRCGP in 1992, and has worked as a GP in Northern Ireland, over the last thirty years. She also works as a GP lead appraiser.

Dr Allen has been working as the medical adviser for the adoption panel in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust for the last seven years. She worked as the medical adviser for the adoption panel in the Southeastern Health and Social Care Trust, for a short time, prior to this appointment. She also works as the medical adviser for Barnardo’s NI.

Family Routes Staff Member and Counsellor

Senior Social Work Practitioner / Counsellor 

Qualifications:  BSSc (QUB) Dip. Social Work (Edinburgh) 
Diploma HE in Counselling from the University of Ulster
AMBACP; AMBICA;
Member of the Irish Fertility Counsellors Association.

Experience:  I was employed as a Social Worker initially in a hospital setting and later in a Family and Child Care Team. On joining Family Routes I spent a number of years concentrating on Adoption and Post Adoption work.

Continuing in Family Routes I am now the lead for our Fertility Counselling Service and also Next Step.

More recently I have joined as a member of Family Routes Adoption Panel.  

What do you like to do in your free time?  I re-upholster old chairs, and thoroughly enjoy going for a walk while catching up on Podcasts.

All time favourite TV series? ER and The West Wing.

Family Routes Board Member

After studying in Queens University I qualified as a doctor way back in 1982. I became a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1986 and I loved my job.

Once my own children were born I sidestepped in to fertility medicine and worked first in the Regional Fertility Centre and latterly in Belfast Fertility and in Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine.

During my time working in fertility medicine I came to appreciate the immense value of counselling services provided by the team at Family Routes and when, after retiring from practice in 2022 I was asked to join the board, I felt honoured. I hope that I will be able to bring to the table the perspective of the couple on their fertility journey.

External Social Worker

Qualifications: BA CQSW

Monica has over 30 years experience work as a social worker with children and families. This includes working in residential childcare , fostering and therapeutic work with children who have experienced trauma and loss.

In her spare time she loves baking and walking.

Adoptive Parent/Psychotherapist

Location
Belfast

I am registered/accredited with:
BACP, Registered member

Code of ethics observed
BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling

Qualifications
Safeguarding Children & Young People – UU
Suicide Awareness & Prevention –Assist

Special interest/experience
Adoption, Attachment issues
Childhood Trauma, Grief & Loss, Infertility,
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Relationship Counselling, Therapeutic Parenting

Additional information
As an adoptive parent, I have a particular interest in working with all people who have been affected by the experience of adoption. In my private practice, I provide therapeutic support to help empower parents, increase their confidence, promote the development of healthy attachment relationships, understand past trauma and improve parent and child’s ability to regulate. I also work independently with a Health Trust providing training pre and post adoption on attachment, neuroscience, contact and life story work.

My theoretical approach
As an integrative Counsellor, I use aspects of Person Centred, CBT and Psychodynamic therapies to suit each client’s individual needs.

I see: Individuals, Couples, Families.

Adopted Adult

Judith qualified as a social worker 40 years ago and initially was a generic social worker. She then worked in one of the first specialist Homefinding Teams. This work included fostering assessments, training foster parents and coordinating pre-adoption foster homes. She then spent many years in healthcare social work. The final years were in practice teaching social workers and as a practice learning tutor at QUB and social work lecturer and tutor at the University of Ulster.

Judith became involved with Family Routes as an adopted person herself.

Independent Social Worker

Neil recently retired from his full-time position as an Adoption and Fostering Social Worker, with a Local Authority in England, where his work also covered the assessment, approval, and support of Family, Friends, and Connected Persons (Kinship Carers). Before qualifying as a Social Worker, he had worked extensively with adolescents in residential care, parenting assessment, and family centre work, as well as in education welfare, and also as a welfare and family rights worker in London. He came into Social Work following a brief career in Engineering, and his career with children and families has spanned over 45 years, during which his experience covered working with families across the life cycle, in both the statutory and independent sectors. Over the course of his career, Neil’s major professional interest had developed to focus on child and adolescent mental health, post-adoption, and post-permanency support work, drawing on both psychodynamic and systemic approaches.

Following his decision to retire from his full-time Social Work role, Neil moved to Northern Ireland to be nearer to his family, and to pursue his other major interest in Sailing and regularly sails his own boat in Belfast Lough and Strangford Lough.