Newbies

[Italiangreyhound]

Hi I am a newbie and only just started this journey, officially made the call last week.

Just interested how may other newbies are out there who are still in the early stages. I keep coming across people and recognising names. Anyone want to let on what stage they are at?

Hi we're nearly at stage two. SW says we have to have medicals done before we can be signed off to stage 2. We've done lots of home study (our SW seems lovely) and we have prep group training next week. Very nervous about prep group. Do I need to take tissues?? I seem to have turned into a crier!!

Hi there,
two months later than we intended, but finally we have sent our 'registration' off. Now waiting to hear back from them. A bit nervous that we might have made the wrong decision, but, over all, it probably won't make a huge difference anyway.
Away now to plan childcare for prep course days.

We got the house! I'm really excited, we have the family home, now we just need the family :).
Why are you worrying you made the wrong decision meita?

Yay 32, I was sure the owner being a SW, your plans to adopt would count in your favour!

Well this LA we have now decided to go with, we have some reservations about them. On a 'gut feeling' level mainly, but also, they have been chaotic, inefficient, and unprofessional up to now (long story).
We decided to go with them despite misgivings, because they have some experience with concurrency which is something we are strongly considering, and we didn't want to do concurrency with a LA who had never done this before. It's stressful enough in the best of circumstances.
So we aren't getting our hopes up for a straightforward, quick process - but hope it will be worth it in the long run!

I was hoping the owner being a sw would swing things in our favour and I'm pretty sure it did. The street is full of families with young children as well which is good because most of our friends don't have kids yet.
I hope things go smoothly for you with your agency. I really admire you for considering concourancy. Our sw suggested it to us when she last visited, and while I can see how it's the best option for a young baby in terms of attachment, I'm not sure I could handle the possibility of having to give a child back I'd bonded with. It really is a very selfless thing to do imo.

Hello - I am a newbie too, not just to this thread but to Mumsnet, although I have been watching a few of the discussions for a while now...
We are just beginning the process- had our initial interview with the SW a couple of weeks ago and DH has finally confirmed that he's happy for us to go ahead (thankfully got an encouraging report from the SW too).
We already have a BC who will be 3 when we are approved assuming it takes the 6 months advertised. As a result we've been told we'd be approved for a baby under 12 months. Very excited by this but also terrified by all the unknowns that come with this age group. I'd really like to avoid FAS but there seem to be very few adopters posting that don't mention their AC have this. I'd be up for a bit of a challenge but don't want to saddle my BC with a sibling who would be dependant on him if something happened to DH and me. It's going to be a big leap of faith I think when we finally end this process!

Hi Bookworm :)

I could have written your post. There are lots of us in your situation and this is a great place for advice and support.

We started our prep course recently and had a good look at Be My Parent for the first time. I felt as though it is going to be a far more individualised process than I had thought before. Lots to think about already. Might be able to look at concurrency even...

Well done 32! Really pleaseed for you. How many spare bedrooms will you have to fill?

Meita - you OK? You sound a bit down.

Hi bookworm, welcome!
our DS will be shy of 4, in 6 months time, so not too much older than your BC. And yes we are worried about many of the same things you mentioned! I think we draw the line where it is known already (as in, most likely) that a particular child will never be able to live independently. But we are prepared to take the plunge where it is not known.

Our prep course starts in less than 3 weeks - eek! Things are finally starting to feel real!

32, I think for concurrency to work out, you really need to be careful about your mindset. I think it might work best if you come to it from a fostering perspective, with the option of maybe (if that's what is decided to be best) adopting the child later, rather than from an adoption perspective, with the chance for things to go wrong. For instance, from a fostering perspective, although it would be hard to say goodbye to a child you had bonded with (I understand this is always one of the hardest aspects of fostering), you might nevertheless be able to see it as a good thing: The birth family gets to stay together, the birth mum got the help she needed, got her act together, the child doesn't NEED to be adopted, that surely is good? Whereas from a prospective adopter perspective, it would feel like a bad thing, things 'going wrong'.
We also think that given we will only be approved to adopt a very young child, due to our DS' age, any child we were to be matched with would likely have been taken into care at birth or soon thereafter. So why not have that child come straight to us rather than detouring to foster placements? It may look selfless, but in effect we think if it benefits the child, it would benefit us in the long term too.

Namechanges, sounds like the course is going well! Glad to hear it seems quite individual/personal, as I am a bit worried that it might turn out into a lengthy box-ticking process. Not feeling particularly down, just cautious about letting my hopes get up - the only thing that really has changed now is that we have entered the part of the process where the clock ticks. (And even that might well not work out). Am very aware that the time after (hopefully) being approved, to matching, is as long as a piece of string, really unpredictable.

oops, sorry for essay!

Wow- your braver than I am if you're considering concurrency. Not that I want to completely rule it out at this stage but even if DH and I could get our heads round it I'm not sure we could risk it not ending in an adoption from our DS's point of view. The arrival (hopefully) of a new child in the family is going to rock his world considerably and I don't think it would be fair if it vanished again after a period of months...
It's so nice to know that others are going through the process at the same time. I look forward to reading the posts of people ahead of us in the process over the coming months :-)

Hi Meita - I was writing my last message as you posted yours so wasn't responding to your comments even if it looked that way! It's nice to know that there are other people wrangling with the same issues that we are. I suspect that we'll take a similar line to yourselves in ruling out certain known things but as you say, that doesn't rule them out altogether. I'm hoping that the extreme cases of scary things like FAS would be slightly evident even in a young child (some of the children on Be My Parent have conditions identified at v young age) so that if you did adopt a child believing them to be 'problem free' but they were later diagnosed with some form of developmental delay/chromosome abnormality that it would be milder and more manageable. I don't know if that is hopelessly naive on my part?!
Good luck with your new LA and the course in a few weeks time. We won't start ours until after Christmas as we couldn't do the December date. I'm quite glad to be able to just concentrate on the festivities first and look forward (!) to beginning everything in January...

I think I have finally got my head round the options re. Concurrent planning and Fostering to adopt, which are two different things. I am butting in with this in case you guys haven't considered it, btw.

When I started looking into adoption many agencies were mixing the two up but they are separate paths. We would also not go into concurrency because of DD (5) but are willing to consider fostering to adopt.

Am aware you may know of it but putting it here for lurkers as this thread is v.useful for all of us! It is when an agency knows of a baby who will go on to become adopted, there is sadly no way they will go back to their birth parents. The prospective adoptive parents may be allowed to foster while the legal adoption stuff is sorted, thus the child is not moved on from foster to adoptive parents. According to my LA this happens if they know a child will be relinquished (rare I know) or is coming from a parent who may not be capable of looking after the baby (eg they have significant mental health problems or learning difficulties).

We would love to do this if we get the chance, as it means a baby wouldn't have more than one separation to go through. It does mean issues at work as adoption leave only starts when a placement order is made, however my work is willing to consider a period of unpaid 'special leave'....I just need to find out how long they'd let me do that for. Then work out if we can afford it!

And I know i am talking about babies here but our LA has 12-15 a year, hence one of the reasons we went with them. We are aware and accepting of the fact that we may be matched with an older child who fits us better, and we them.

Essay over!!!!

Hi Choccyjules - what does And I know i am talking about babies here but our LA has 12-15 a year, hence one of the reasons we went with them. We are aware and accepting of the fact that we may be matched with an older child who fits us better, and we them. mean?

Hope all is going well.

researchbookworm I think FAS has certain facial features which identify it. I cannot be sure if all children with Fas would have it or there might tbe childen without those features but who have it. Just not sure but I think you can know a bit more. I really think it is important for adopters to know what situations they can and can't cope with. I had wrongly assumed we might all feel the same until I spoke to a person who had a 'problem' with adopting a child who has a physical disability, which I don't necessarily have a 'problem' etc etc. If that makes sense. We all have different things we would find hard.

Meita it does make sense for child to come staight to adopters. The only proboem for me was work. I just can;t afford to stop work and not know what was happening. I wish I could!

Meita great your work are so flexible. Hope it works out.

Sorry for intruding on your thread

Thought that I could shed some light on the FAS/facial features thing for you Italian +anyone else who is interested :)

There are several conditions which can be caused by alcohol exposure in utero.

'Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders' is the blanket term for every condition caused by alcohol exposure, of which FAS is only one.

One of the diagnostic criteria for FAS is the facial features - smooth philtrum, thin upper lip, short palpebral fissures (eye slits) are 3 of the main ones. A child will not be diangosed with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome unless they are showing some facial features. That said, as a child gets older and their face changes, their facial features can become much less noticeable, and as with all things, it's a spectrum of abnormalities, and some children with FAS's facial features will show much more strongly than other children

However, a child can be affected very strongly by alcohol exposure and not develop facial features of this. This is because the eyes, face, lips etc only form during certain weeks/days of pregnancy and every foetus is individual - so the timing of the alcohol consumption is very important with regard to what will happen to the child later.

If a child has many symptoms of foetal alcohol exposure but no facial features, they will not be diangosed with FAS but with something else, eg. FASD, ARND, ARBD. I've seen the current diagnostic criteria the USA are using for each disorder but can't find which ones the UK are using which is slightly annoying.

Just because a child has no facial features, and hence, doesn't have 'full' FAS, doesn't mean that they have 'got off lightly' as it were. A child with FAS may actually have a higher IQ, less behaviour problems and fewer neurological deficits than a child without facial features (who has FASD or ARND)

If a child doesn't have physical problems related to alcohol exposure (eg. the facial features, heart problems, kidney problems etc) then you may not know they have been affected by alcohol until they are well out of baby stage - problems with learning, executive functioning, judgement, understanding causes/consequences, behaviour, social skills are all common with FASD/FAS and may be mild or may be very significant problems (and everything in between) but may well not show up until school age.

Thanks Lilka very helpful.

Hi Italian I just meant that we are often told not to expect to be able to adopt really young children but in our LAs case there is a strong possibility that this may be possible.

Hi all,
As some of u know , we did the foster to adopt/ concurrency thing and for us , thankfully it went well but it wasn't without its dramas. I would agree that u need a completely different mindset ( which we didn't have ) if you do this . Chances are better if you want a young baby . Feel free to ask anything x

Ps , just re reading some of the earlier posts and I would say that from experience agencies cannot be 100 per cent certain that a baby will not go back to the BP unless the placement order is through ... There is always a chance that the court can return the baby during the court proceeding s . We learnt that .....

Yes, Italian/Choccy, that's also what we have been told. One LA said that in their consortium, of the last 31 children they placed, 18 were under one year old. That came as a big surprise to us! Another LA said in more general terms, that the average age at placement (which is a lot lower than the official average age at adoption, which is somewhere a bit over 3y) has been coming down recently, and they find themselves more frequently taking babies into care at or soon after birth (these would be the babies that would then have a placement order sometime before they are one year old). A couple more LA we didn't talk to in depth but they were willing to consider us despite our DS being only just 3, indicating that they tend to have/ think they will have a number of very young children to place.
On the other hand, we have spoken to several LAs/VAs who wouldn't consider us and told us to wait until DS was 4 to start the process, or even until he was 5, as they were only looking to recruit prospective adopters who would be able to be matched with 3yo upwards.
I don't know if the demography of children needing adoption is so drastically different depending on LA, or if things have changed and some just haven't caught up with their guidelines yet.

Another thing one SW told us was that they are experiencing more 'voluntary' relinquishments these days. Usually from young mothers, sometimes recent immigrants, who simply can't afford to have a baby whilst trying to survive/build a better future for themselves. I was surprised, and a bit saddened - IMO this is the kind of thing that makes a society 'broken', when the reality for certain women is that giving up their baby is/seems like the best option to them. Don't know if this is a general trend or just one SW's experience based on maybe only one or two cases.

In any case, it does sound as if things are changing, not just regarding the new approval process. I find the 'older' adopters' (on MN) views and experiences invaluable and am guessing that what I have learnt here will be equally as important as anything we will be told at Prep course, but I also think we need to always do our own research and keep asking questions and bear in mind that things are always changing.

In other news, we have been able to sort childcare for the prep course days, it was surprisingly easy. I don't know if that is an indication of us having a solid support network, or if people just feel they ought to help given it is about adoption ;)

Regarding the difference between concurrency and foster to adopt, I'd love to properly understand this! As far as I know there is never 100% certainty unless the placement order has gone through, which is obviously not the case in either option, as middlesexmummy has said. But I understand that in foster to adopt, the chances (for baby staying) are better. I thought that the key differences were a) that in CP, the baby is very young, officially 0-24 months but in practice, more like 0-6 months; whereas FtA is for any age. And b) a CP baby goes from birth family to concurrent carers, whereas a FtA child goes from a foster family to FtA family, in other words, was already in care.

If this is correct (and I agree that many people seem confused/give conflicting information), it would follow that:

-CP means there is only one move, from BM to concurrent carers, whereas in FtA the number of moves is not necessarily reduced (compared to 'standard' adoption), and there will still be at least two moves (from BM to initial fosterers, then to FtA family).
-In both options, the child moves to his or her forever family at an earlier time than they would in standard adoption.
-In FtA you would know a lot more about the circumstances. For example in CP you can't predict if BM will be making a big effort e.g. always attending contact sessions, getting herself a specialist lawyer, signing up for rehab... all these things you would hope she would do in order to get her baby back, and having baby removed might just be the kick she needed. SS don't think she will (or they wouldn't place the baby in a concurrency setting) but you never know. Whereas in FtA the child has already been in care, maybe for quite a while, and probably contact has already broken down, BM has already had months to make an effort to change her circumstances and hasn't. So the chances that she will suddenly wake up and start doing all the things she has to to get her child back, are lots smaller.

Hm, just thinking aloud here, would value anyone's thoughts :)

Hi , I always thought it was the same thing but I guess the age is the distinctive factor . When we were approved we were approved as adopters but when we decided to go through concurrency they had to approve us as foster carers as that was what we were whilst the placement order was being sought . Btw if an agency tells you they it s 100 per cent that the baby will stay with you don't believe them .... We were told that it was over 95 per cent that the placement order was going to be agreed within two weeks of foster placement but it wasn't and took 4 months which then opened us up to what FC' s are trained for ( contact ) etc which as adopters we were not ... Very hard ....

hello! I hope this is the right thread to say hi - I am a newbie! We (husband and I) are just starting our adoption process - have the first meeting in 2 weeks, so in the process of doing a lot more research and prep work! Always knew adoption was the route for us, just waited for the right time - and this is it! The right time! I may be more of a lurker as I can be a bit shy on the internet! Haha! Anyways - hello!!

hi tsfp brilliant news that you have made the first step. Don't be shy on here, everyone is really friendly and if you have any questions or want to get something off your chest do! x

Hi tsfp. It's good to lurk (but also good to talk )

What a bloody interesting, and timely, discussion of concurrency. DH and I have been talking it over just in the last week. I think I'd have to try not to bond with a baby though until it was settled as I just don't think I could cope if the baby went back (and back to what?) DH feels it would be being bereaved . And then if it was OK to then try to bond with a baby I'd previously been trying not to?

I really want to want to do CP because the benefits for the baby are obvious but I just don't know if I'd be strong enough. Any (more) words of wisdom?