How do you start? Do we have a chance at all?

[Debedebede]

Hi,

I know this is possibly a stupid question,..and I know I can call our council to register my interest in adoption. However, despite having considered adoption since I was about 14 (my best friend grew up in care), I'm not even sure whether they would consider us. How do you go about adoption? How do you know the time is right and that you'd be able to cope? So far, I've always had my head decide and made the "sensible" decision to get financially secure before having children. DH is happy to consider adoption (haven't had much luck with natural conception,...and my body doesn't seem too keen on the idea,...but the idea of adoption has always co-existed with ttc anyway).

We are married, have been together for about 10 years (not been married that long, though). Both DH and I are teachers (SEN and primary) and in our 30s. So far, so stable. It does mean long working hours for me, though,...although DH is only part-time and usually home at lunch and I intend to move to a school closer to home in the near future regardless of us having children. However, his family are living in Wales - about 2 hours from us - and mine are living abroad. So we don't really have lots of family around. I'm bilingual and would like for my children to have exposure to both cultures as well. I don't have British citizenship, but have "resident" status. Would that rule us out right from the start?

Sorry,...this sounds all rather muddled and confused.

Hi.

Generally you sound great, stable relationship, experience with children.

No idea re british citizenship. tbh the easiest way to find out would be to contact your LA and ask them. They may wish to match you with child that 'reflects your heritage'. This could go for or against you depending on your background.

If you are adopting pre-school age they would probably require one of you to stay at home for at least a year, but they may be flexible on that.

They won't be too worried about family being nearby if you can show you have local friends that can act as a support network. (eg if you were all ill, who coulf get shopping in for you; who will you turn to for emotional support etc)

If no infertility diagnosis they will want you to commit to not ttc from probably start of assessment until some time after child is placed. (very expensive to train ou and they you fall pregnant, very disrupting for you to fall pregnant just after placement).

Define 'financially secure'. No massive credit card debts, live within your means, can afford to support a child. Also you need suitable housing - at least a bedroom for child.

As well as your LA, you can also contact neighbouring LAs and Voluntary Agencies. You can have initial chats on phone (try to have number of children and approx age range (as wide as possible), and any special needs thought out a bit first). They will send you info and a form. You get invited to info session (you can go to lots if you want to). Decide who you like best and apply through them.

Look at Adoption UK website; note message boards for adopters tend to be mainly those having problems, so don't get scared off.

Hope this helps

TaT. Adopted siblings age 2 and 8, 6 years ago, and all going well.

Just a quick reply, since I'm off to bed, but I'll add a bit more information tomorrow. Teens post is great.

You don't need to be a British Citizen to adopt, the legal requirement is that you have been habitually resident in the UK for at least a year. Is your husband British? As Teen said they would prefer to match you with a child who has a parent or other close family from your country/culture, especially if you want your children to be bilingual etc.

Either you or your husband need to be planning on 6-12 months adoption leave (some agencies say 6 months, some 12 months)

I think if you and/or your husband is still in the 'considering but not decided' stage then read around. You can read forums like this one or AUK, you can read books on adoption, and all agencies that I know of run information evenings on adoption. The evenings should be designed to help you learn as much as possible and help you make a decision

(Mum to 3, adopted between 1996 and 2007, aged 10, 8 and 23 months when they came home, now 27, 17 and 8) :)

Just a small additional thought here. You would need to be prepared for the fact that one of you will probably be expected to stop working for at least 6 months after adopting. Would this be possible for you?

Our agency hold informal introduction evenings that you are invited to attend before making any decisions to apply, if you go along to a meeting and decide not to continue on to application, they do not hound you.
At the intro meetings there is time to talk to a social worker privately, where you can ask any questions you may have.
I think most agencies do this now.

Thank you for all the responses and advice (we've been out cycling all day, so couldn't respond earlier). I'll have a look at what agencies there are in our area.

The "support network" could be a bit of an issue. DH doesn't "like people". He's amazing with kids, but adults mostly just bore him... However, I know MIL would be happy to come down and stay with us, if we were ill or anything else happened. She's a retired childminder. (We aren't ill very much though,...I think the last time either of us have been off work was five years ago.) My family, despite being abroad, are also always happy to help and would come over, if there really were an issue. We have two very strong and close families behind us,...they are just not geographically close.

I think we are "financially stable", although we do have a mortgage. We've got a lot of space and are currently converting our three-bed house to a four-bed. There's always room to extend further. I'm always finding it a bit sad that there don't seem to be too many children in our village. It's a lovely place to grow up, I would think - with a beach, fields all around and a major city only about 40 minutes drive away.

In terms of taking time out, I would think that six months to a year wouldn't be too much of an issue. DH's school would struggle, because his class are quite "special" and he is working with children with complex needs, but my school is quite used to people going on and returning from mat leave all the time.

I wouldn't think that our "ethnic makeup" will come up for adoption in the UK very often. I don't belong to an ethnic minority in that sense. I was born in Germany, but DH is British.

I think I'll have to think about this...and speak to DH. Thanks again for all the information.

If there are no children with a German background when you get approved, then as your husband is British you can adopt a child who is only British

Having a mortgage is not a problem, nor is having some debt. The important thing is that you have enough coming in to cover what's going out, and that any debts you have are under control. Some people adopt while on benefits, in council housing etc, adoption isn't only a route for the wealthy. I doubt you have any problems based on what you've said

How do you know the time is right and that you'd be able to cope?

For me, it wasn't anything practical, it was a feeling. I'd wanted children for years but over a few months it stopped being a vague desire and started being a really strong "I want children now" feeling. And so at that point I looked into routes to becoming a mother. Yes I had a practical issues that were sorted over the next year or so but I didn't let them stop me starting.

I always had some worries about coping, but I think those are common for most parents-to-be, both birth and adoptive. I think it's an unusual person who is actually feeling completely confident about their ability to parent before they become parents, and IME total confidence is usually born out of naivety. Most people (including me) have some worries but become parents anyway because we want it so much, and so we hope for the best :) And the vast majority of parents do cope very well with parenthood, even if they do find it challenging

If you do go ahead, we are a friendly bunch and we want to be a support for anyone who wants it. Feel free to come ask any questions at any time (or come to rant, or celebrate or anything) :)

You may need to think about the support network thing, I didn't explain it very well before. As I understand it, it is deemed important that you can show you can 'build and maintain' relationships. If your DH appears to have no mates that could be a concern. Suppose he is getting stressed about the placement - who would he turn to for a friendly ear? You will need references from both family and non family, and the non family may be expected to be part of your 'support network'. Perhaps someone else who has been through approval more recently than I might be able to explain it better.

I am friends with a couple where one of them is from an EU country. As far as I am aware the adopted children are British with no links to that country (though of course I don't know the backgrounds).

I do remember the SW going on about our support network, to be honest we went with the flow, said my brother would be more supportive. Blah blah.
When our girls came home, I helped to set up a post adoption support group in our area, so the support we got through this was not known about before the girls.
Also I re kindled friendships with people with children. I joined a toddler group and am still friends with many from there over a decade later.
Support grows with the children. We had a few friends who we put down, who very quickly disappeared when the chips were down.

Ah yes. I have got better support from people I've met since the children arrived than from some of those from my network. But the fact we could name people for the network meant we could make relationships etc. If we had just said we have no friends but we will make them when the child comes then that would not have been good enough!

Debedebede on my prep course there was a German couple who had already adopted a little boy previously through the LA and were coming back to be assessed for a second child. They spoke German at home and were raising him bilingually. As far as I'm aware there was no German connection in his birth family, although they may have been one I don't know about; and the LA were assessing them for number 2 so must have been happy about placing children in that scenario. Also I know very slightly a German single adopter who adopted a junior school aged child in the UK, again I've no idea if there was a German connection in the child's background I don't know about. So either there are children waiting with German heritage, or LAs (it was two different ones) are placing children without that background with German adopters. Hope that helps.

Thanks, teen. I figured that this might be something we could struggle with. It's not that we don't have friends or are incapable of establishing relationships with people. We just don't constantly meet up with others and our social life isn't as active as that of some of my friends (to be fair, most of them have kids). I think part of the reason for that is that we are both in jobs that require us to constantly manage all kinds of relationships all day long...and they aren't jobs where you can just switch off when you leave the building. It's the holidays now, though, which means we have a lot more time for family and friends, and I can finally relax a little.

Thank you also, Lilka. I'm sure most parents-to-be get worried and anxious,... Having three must be quite a challenge, though. When you get pregnant, you've got several months until the baby arrives...possibly after having ttc for a while. How long does the adoption process take? I mean, from finding out that there is a child that they'd like to entrust to you,...until it actually arrives?

Thanks, bananaketchup. I wasn't sure whether this was something the LA wouldn't be terribly happy with. I know my side of the family would find it incredibly important that our children (biological or adopted) speak German. It possibly depends on the age of the child as well.

Well, I have never had more than two children living at home because DD1 was 21 by the time DS came home. Having 3 as a singly IS hard, but when they come one at a time with a few years between each, it's doable.

I'd say for most parents it takes a few months (I'd say 3-5 as an average) between seeing their childs initial information, to starting introductions with their child. Certainly it took some months for me - for my older children it was 4/5 months to the start of intros, and our intros were a few weeks long (but would be much shorter for a baby). You have to read the information, then if you want to go forward the childs SW has to meet you, SS make their decision, you then have more meetings and get more information, before matching panel is booked. It takes a while, but that's IMHO a good thing for preparation.

Some adoptive parents wind up in a situation where they want to adopt a child who is not yet free for adoption and/or the birth parents are appealing in court and this can result in waiting a long time, because court can be easily delayed and appeals can take ages. However the parents are willing to wait it out because they believe this child is theirs. You can be talking 9 months to a year + in some situations that I've seen or been following along on AdoptionUK. That's a very long wait. You can go a long way to preventing that by refusing to consider any child who is not legally ready to be adopted.

that should say **living at home at the same time