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‘We didn’t call ourselves mum and dad for 10 months’- Fostering to adopt

When babies are taken into care they live with foster carers - sometimes a series of them - until they are adopted. Occasionally they're fostered by people who themselves hope to become the adoptive parents... but know that they may have to hand the baby back.

Nina and Steven hadn't thought it would be difficult to start a family.

"I suppose we were quite blasé," Nina says.

She became pregnant four times in three years, but each time it ended in sadness.

"I ended up having four miscarriages over the course of about three years, which was obviously quite an emotional time for both of us," she says.

Beginning to think about adoption, the couple did some internet research and stumbled across information about "early permanence placements".

This is where people become foster carers to children under two years old but may go on to adopt them later "if the courts decide they cannot be cared for permanently by their birth family," says Hannah Moss of Coram, a group of children's charities which also runs a regional adoption agency.

Read the full article on the BBC here.