Please can I ask, at what point do prospective adopters need to be specific?

[Italiangreyhound]

Sorry for the odd title of the thread, not sure how else to put it! At what point are prospective adopters asked about the kind of child they might be able to parent. I know in our area, for us as prospective adopters, we would be looking to adopt a child aged 0-5. At what point might we be asked more detailed questions?

Is that when you register your interest in adoption, when you see a social worker, when you have a home study? Just curious, we have a few months to go before we can start the process and I am just not sure at what point we will need to really think this through. Do we get the chance to have some training before the social workers pin down what we think or do they ask lots up front?

Many thanks for any replies.

I was asked about age range when applying - they use that to prioritise applications I think, so if they have lots of 4-6 year olds coming through the system they prioritise the prospectives looking at that age range

Otherwise, for me the rest was not really looked at until and throughout the homestudy, and you can change your mind. In my mind, a main purpose of the homestudy for adopters is thinking through the kind of child you can parent best, and that can take months of thinking sometimes

The last time I was approved, we went through the checklist of potential issues and disabilties nearer the end than the beginning. Although that was just my agency, and others might do it sooner. It was over two sessions, because I marked out several issues that I wanted to research further in my own time before ticking the boxes

I did find that there wasn't much help at all in exploring certain issues. For instance, I wondered whether or not to tick 'yes' to HIV, Hepatitis, and other blood disorders, but I had to go research it on my own. Ditto other medical conditions like heart conditions. The SW just asked whether or not I was okay with it. I didn't know enough (in my mind) to commit to a yes, so I asked for more time, and it was a struggle to find out what I wanted to know. SW's aren't medically trained after all!! So I would expect some level of being on your own to work it out, although I was supported when discussing gender and age because the SW could advise more in those areas

It's also worth noting that now, adopters are blanket approved for all children. There is a recomendation for a certain age group, gender etc. But that is not mandatory, and you can adopt a child outside your recommendation. If you are approved for a 0-5 year old boy, you can still adopt a 7 year old boy. Sometimes (rarely) it happens!! So nothing is ever set in stone as it were. That is different from when I was approved, back then you were only approved for a certain type of child, so much less flexibility

I don't think you would be asked to be very specific until the middle-end of the homestudy. Although others might have had a different experience of course

sorry, meant a 7 year old girl, not boy :)

Thanks Lilka very helpful. As we have a DD aged 7 we know we would not be willing to take a child too close to her age, both because our local authority don't thin kit's a good idea and because we also would think it is better too. Our local authority says 2 to 3 years at least between children.

Thanks for all your help.

It was quite straightforward for us, since social services would only approve us for a girl aged 0-2; we were given no option of anything else. Then, about halfway through homestudy, we went through a long list of about 60 conditions/situations and asked if we would consider adopting a child in that situation. This included social situations (e.g. parent in prison, child born as a result of rape) as well as physical conditions.

We absolutely ruled out any medical condition clearly incompatible with us being working parents, but most things we marked as 'it depends'. The social worker was fine with that.

Devora thank you, there are so many things I had not even thought they would ask. I guess 'it depends' is a good answer.

Thanks so much.

Yes, once again the old standby: "That would depend, and I would be getting your expert advice" . Never fails!

I do think it's a useful exercise, though. It was quite a surprise to me to discover my wariness about adopting a child from a horrific social situation (like being born into a paedophile ring, for example). I kept thinking, "How on earth do I help a child come to terms with that?". But of course all adoptive parents have to help their child come to terms with their past, and thinking that through at that stage was very helpful to me.

Thanks Devora I can't quite imagine how I will answer all these questions.

I think the 'it depends' answer will be very useful.

Is it normal to find even thinking about all this quite hard! I guess the extra thinking time is useful. I don't want to be too surprised at what the social workers tell us!

In my experience you will find it an ever moving feast. I started to tell the sw I thought the best match for me would be x and throughout the homestudy I changed to Y and funnily enough only this week I have gone back to X again! As you learn and look into different things I found my options changing.

Yes, I think it is normal to find it hard (when seriously would you usually have a conversation about your ability to parent a child born from an incestuous relationship, for example?) and to have changing feelings about what would be right for your particular circumstances. One of the reasons that the home study takes so long is to give you time to explore the option thoroughly, both with the SW and on your own.

We found the tick list of "yes", "no", "maybe" really brutal - perhaps it's seeing it written in black and white. And we felt bad for not saying yes to everything, whilst having to be realistic that saying we would be OK with a child with a significantly life limiting condition, for example, would not be fair as we didn't actually feel able to cope.

"it depends" is both a useful line and true!

Agree about maybe/depends/would consider. I used that quite a lot. To give one example, I was asked about blind or sight impaired children. That category is so wide - from children who are totally blind to those who are mildly short sighted and need glasses some of the time! No would rule out children I could parent, yes would say yes to a chil I couldn't parent. Maybe with a note explaining further was the best answer for me

Very much agree with Families - totally unlike any conversation you will ever have had before!

We have found that were asked quite a lot about this but it wasn?t until towards the end of the homestudy that we actually discussed it in any detail. A lot of the time our answer was that ?we would discuss? which our SW agreed was the best option as so often it depends on the child.

When we registered we were asked the age and how many we would be prepared to adopt. But towards the end of the process and as our SW got to know us better she was telling us what she thought would suit us better with our lifestyle and finances etc and what they would feel comfortable placing us with. This took away the guilty feelings we thought we would had saying that we wouldn?t want children with certain conditions as well.

I agree with Lilka that we were given little information on some conditions but our SW was quite good in telling us how frequently they had children to place with those conditions so that we have an idea of what is and isn?t likely. The prep course was useful for some of this but we found that lots of the case studies we were given were often to spark off a debate and get people thinking more which was interesting in itself!

Thanks so much for all your helpful comments.