Wanted: A Family of My Own - Episode 1 tonight

[Lilka]

At 9.00PM on ITV

From their website:

Dan and Ania from the south coast have applied to adopt. Originally from Poland, Ania met Dan 10 years ago when she came to the UK to work. Dan has two older daughters but the couple want a child of their own. Will they find a baby?

Also in this episode, we meet a baby living with foster carers. He desperately needs a family to love and give him a permanent home. His birthparents have struggled with mental illness for many years and can’t take care of him. Will his social worker be able to find the right family for him?

My only comment is that I wish one of these programs would actually follow up or do something about post adoption. Looks like this also is only interested in up until moving in day. Oh well. I hope it's a good program. Again, I hope there's no "let's judge/bash potential adopters because of their matching criteria"

Absolutely, Miracle. We considered one little girl who had a very, very unusual and demanding medical condition. The sw seemed very keen on us but when I did some research on her medical condition it was absolutely clear that she needed to be the only child in a family and would need a SAHP just in order to get her to all the medical appointments. A SAHP is absolutely not on offer in our family. I was amazed the sw was interested in us - either lack of common sense or desperation - I still think about her, and if I could afford not to work and didn't have another child I would have said yes to her. But you have to be guided by good sense, not just emotion.

candy, our sw told us that once you got past prep you were 90% likely to end up adopting. Once you get to Panel you're well over 95%.

Thanks Devora, if you get turned down, can you apply again?

I watched the bit where they had to say about disabilities and I was a bit put out at first.... my DD1 has severe autism and all i could think was well what if this was DD1? They would miss out on her amazing personality because of that box-ticking. But then, I remembered how difficult our day to day life is and realistically why put yourself in that situation if you know you might not cope. Hats off to all these people on this show .

This is all new to me but I'm a little surprised that the little boy, Joshua, has been difficult to place. I know his history is obviously challenging but I must admit, I didn't think he'd be that hard to place given his age and that he entered foster care at 9 days old.

I think you can, candy, and I imagine sometimes people get asked to go away and address something, and maybe come back when they have made progress in that area. But if they actually just don't think you're suitable, it must be very hard. You may have to find a new agency, and you'd have to say you got turned down before, so there would be double the mountain to climb.

I also had weeks to think over what additional needs I was willing to accept. And saying 'no' was never easy no matter how many things I said 'yes' to.

Joshua is such a lovely little lad

Touch wood, no adopter bashing visible yet...

Miracle

Don't understand why they would tell the older children that the people there are hoping to adopt?couldn't they just leave it at "id only a fun day"??seems unfair to the children :-(

Plus, hixchix, when you adopt you pretty much know you are going to deal with extra needs. It's like a huge leap into the unknown and you feel very out of control throughout the whole problem. So when we are offered little bits of control, we tend to grab at them.

I did adopt a child who is ?FAS and went through horrendous neonatal withdrawal from drugs. But I turned down a baby girl who had horrendous criminal activity in her family, because I couldn't envisage handling helping her come to terms with that. A friend of mine adopted a child of about the same age, whose backstory was all about similar horrendous criminal activity - but she had specified no drugs or alcohol. So neither of us were wimping out of adopting 'damaged' children; we just had different senses of what we could cope with. And maybe we were wrong on that, but we did our best at the time.

I had to look at it from both sides really, my bio sister was adopted out I wasn't, and seeing her disappointment after meeting our mother was horrid so ISWYM Devora.

And also, I should say hats off to all the people with the courage to adopt!

Not an adoptive mum, just saw this in active convos and am watching the programme. I have 2 birth children with SN/health issues. I love them both but I wouldn't choose to have a child with those problems. I think it's lovely that some parents actively want to adopt a child with SN but I think the majority of adopters, like parents of birth children, would hope for a child who is healthy/no SN but accept that this is not guaranteed especially with some issues that appear later. To judge someone who says no to adopting a child with a known SN is awful. I'm sure the people judging aren't thinking that they want to get pregnant and hope their baby has disabilities.

That sounds awful, hixchix.

Maryz I know exactly what you mean but I cant say either way, DD1 is amazing and if you took away the ASD you take away a bit of her, so I'm not sure, I'd take away the uncertainty of her future, her difficulties and insecurities but not her quirks. But like you say it is kind of pot luck so we would never have to make that choice .

The adopters have got our caterpillar book! Hooray!

Ha, the caterpillar book! I think MyFeet is right - I have never seen them in any non-adopted child's playbox

I think everyone who adopts buys those books don't they? Luckily dd managed to break hers so the voices no longer work, working on breaking ds' book as I can't bear the sound of my own voice. They still love to look at them though which is nice.

Exactly Devora, you do have different senses than other adopters

I felt awful saying 'no' to some things, purely because you know you're saying no to a real child who already exists, BUT at the end of the day, you absolutely have to have an idea of what you can and can't cope with

Some birth parents can't cope with their kids SN's, so it's wrong for a judger to say 'oh but if your birth child had SN, you'd have to get on with it so why should you get to choose blah blah blah'. We DO have real limitations.

As well as things we really couldn't imagine living with. Did I feel awful saying no to any children with terminal illnesses? - yes. But in my head I couldn't cope with the idea of adopting a child knowing that I wouldn't have longer than a few years with them. Reactive attachment disorder? No. Severe physical disabilities needing home adaptations? No.

Oh, and a baby? No

But there ARE people who want to adopt children with significant physical needs. A very few who feel able to live with RAD, or a terminal illness. And plenty of people to adopt the healthy babies I didn't want to adopt.

We can't all want the same children, and it's so important to get a good match

Being two weeks away from panel, this came at a good time for us!

Regarding why Joshua was 'hard to place', it's one thing to say 'both birth parents have severe mental health issues' - but if you'd say, for example, 'both birth parents are schizophrenic' then it is easier to see why many prospective adopters would be wary.

I liked the bit where a prospective adopter couple said 'he's really cute but probably too young for us' at the activity day... so much for 'all adopters want babies'!

And it seemed to me to come across quite well that the prospective adopters were not simply picking from a catalogue of desirable attributes, but were rather carefully considering what they might, or might not, be able and willing to cope with.

I also felt that the programme was a lot more careful about safeguarding the children's right to privacy, compared to 15'000 kids. With faces blanked out, often only seeing the back of the children's heads, etc. Just goes to show that you can still make a good programme like that.

Side note - I kept thinking "Nicky please stop saying that they can't have a child of their own, pleaaase"

I have worked in a psychosis team, so I have worked with many people who have schizophrenia and I can see why people find the possibility scary but my experiences of people with psychosis have led me to feel very saddened for little Joshua.