Reference for a potential adopter.

[LemonBreeland]

My absolute best friend from school is looking to adopt. She has a meeting this week to start the process. She has asked me to be one of her referees if she passes this first stage (fingers crossed).

Is there some kind of pro forma for these references or do you just write whatever you want. I want to do the best I can for her. She is the most wonderful patient person and will be a brilliant Mum. What should I write?

Please help me lovely adoption experts.

It depends which agency/local authority she's with. Many will write asking either broad subject areas to consider, or enclosing a pro forma. Being a reference often then involves a meeting with the social worker to talk things through a little more - and to check you're real!

Very best of luck to your friend and to you

My 3 referees were just asked to write their own references in stage 1 then our social worker met with all 3 in stage 2. I would say they're looking to you to provide evidence of the behaviours she has that would make her a good adoptive parent, remember these will be different to birth parenting to some extent because of the issues that surround adoptive children. For example she'll need to be comfortable discussing their past with them and that could include some very difficult conversations. They'll also be looking to you to be honest about which things she'll maybe need extra support with, that's not a bad thing but sometimes us adopters are reluctant to put ourselves out there like that so early on.
Good luck to you both.

Thanks for the replies. Handy for me to know that I will need to meet with them as I live quite far away.

I don't want to say too much more about her circs as don't want to identify her. But she definitely has the skills needed to deal with the difficult stuff, imo anyway.

Our referees were sent a form with questions on, such as how they feel we can support children, what is our relationship like etc. Then after they'd sent them back our sw went out and had an informal chat with them.

Our SW met with one of our referees who lives locally, another one who travelled here from abroad (was coming anyway), and had a phone chat with the third. Our SW would have been happy to only have phone conversations with both of our long-distance referees and to only have met the local one. Again, it depends on agency and individual SWs!

Thanks guys really helpful. I do visit where sge lives regularly as my Mum lives in the area too.

I would prefer questions as it would help me with what to say.

*she

I have been a referee to friends. (They were accepted and are now mummy and daddy to the second cutest boy in the world.)

I was sent a list of questions to ask. It covered a lot. From how I knew them to how they got together, how I saw their relationship, how I felt their relationship would cope with challenges, their experience with children, how they would be at battling with agencies to get support for a child, how they interacted with my (then singular) child.

The social worker came round for about an hour also for a chat. The main thing that mattered to her was that I was the mother of a very very PFB who probably would be doubtful about letting Mary Poppins babysit but that I did trust my friends with dd.