Adoption information evening & what to expect

[Lalou17]

Hello everyone, we are new to this & this will be Our first post. . So here gos
We will be attending an Adoption information evening at the end of January in hope that we can find out as much information as possible on adoption.
I'm just wondering wether anyone could give us a little bit of an idea on what to expect from this evening as I'm a little impatient & can't wait already for January to be here x

Hi Lalou17. Me and husband are interested in adoption after me trying several times naturally (7 times to be precise 😐) to be a mum but no joy. May I please ask about the info session you are attending as I wouldn't know where to start. Thank you and I hope someone with experience can answer your question.

Hi Lou2016, im really sorry to hear that
Well we went on a sight called 'one adoption' & there's a list of all upcoming event evenings depending on what area you are from.
Also this sight gives you a fair bit of information including adoption stories, a couple of the children's profiles and stories & a few other things you will most likely find help full
I hope this helps x

Hi. What would you like to know? Ask away :)

Hi braceface, where do I start? Everything you know if possible .. I really don't know what the information evening involves but I am very curious to find out. I know January isn't far away but anything anyone can tell me would be really help full to us x

They will talk to you about the types of children who are placed for adoption. Many are older some with special needs very often from abused and neglected backgrounds. There is loads you can start to read now about parenting a child who has been through trauma and neglect.

Thankyou for your reply Braceface, it is really appreciated.
I will have a look & have a good read. . Thankyou again x

Read about attachment and therapeutic parenting styles.

Thanks for the helpful info Lalou17 😊

We found it a very good session. Ask any questions that you have. They are unlikely to sugar coat things as they want to be sure that you know what you are getting in to. We adopted twice so don't let that put you off. Good luck

Hi fatbird71, thankyou so much for your reply it was really helpful.
We will go with an open mind & make sure we find out as much as we possibly can do.
Thankyou again

Our adoption evening was heavily attended (unusual apparently). We were given an introduction to the process, the people and the types of children we might be able to adopt. They explained they would be choosing 20 families to more closely interview and then pick just 7 families to work with, in order to prepare us for Panel. Panel decide if you have completed the adoption classes successfully and are able to adopt now and how many kids etc.
They also had several tables laid out showing examples of books prospective parents make to show to potential adoptive kids, the coursework folders you put together etc. It's really good and informative.

I would recommend you a) talk to local authority to find out when these evenings take place and get yourself onto one of them.
B) use it to network and let them know who you are, ask questions, show interest etc. Be positive, personable, give them someone to remember. Hopefully you get through to next stage, which for us was an interview at home and some light-hearted exercises to get an idea of our personalities. After that we were told we'd been accepted and then arranged to attend classes to prepare us for the adoption process.

God luck, wishing you every success xx

Hi SugarPlumLairy, thankyou so much for your detailed reply, it gives us a good idea on what to expect if nothing else.
We really appreciate it
We are going to an information evening at the end of January.. it can't come soon enough.. but in the mean time I'll try find out as much info as possible.
Thankyou again x

I think we ended up attending three! One on fostering and two (two years apart) on adoption. This is because we thought we were ready to go 8 years ago but it turned out we were not! We started the process 6 years ago and adopted just over three and a half years ago.

I seem to recall one was an afternoon and two were evening.

We saw a film about the type of kids in the system (probably produced with child actors), had a chance to talk to social workers and there was tea and biscuits galore!

I think we did speak about ourselves a bit but if I remember rightly ours were a lot more about them telling us. I had heard the most common demographic (at the time) was boys of three. But while in the system we heard about a couple of babies (one with many needs who tugged at my heart strings but who we ultimately felt was not right for us), toddlers, pre-schoolers, primary aged children etc.

Having a child of 7 (at the time) with additional needs meant we felt we could not just say yes to any child. The .matching process was the hardest but and dh and I did not always agree! But I know now how right he was!

So whatever you are told about who is 'available' for adoption in your area, once you are approved you can end up adopting out of area. There are potentially some issues 're support etc.but many do it. We ended up adopting a three year old boy in our area and have had excellent support.

Good luck to you all.

Italiangreyhound thankyou for your reply it is really helpful for us. . And how amazing your new son got his new mummy & Daddy.. perfect

We went to an adoption information evening which was very informal. There was tea and biscuits, various books and written information out to read. Our agency didn't do anything formal; we literally just chatted with the social workers and with people who had already adopted. I think there were 5 sets of potential adopters in total, but we all arrived and left at different times. We took some time to think about things before going for it, and I appreciated the no-pressure approach. We are now about to start Stage 2.

Our friend went to an information event with a different adoption agency (Local Authority in her case) and said it was a more formal affair with a presentation and Q&A afterwards.

Hi, I’ve been to 3 events with one adoption in our region (they’re a regional consortium of all the different LAs and then split again into the 3 regions of the county) two within the same area were the same. (Like Italian we weren’t as ready as we thought at the first one so went to another a couple of months later in a different town but turned out to be run by the same adoption team manager)

The evening’s running order for these was a video with adoptive parents being interviewed about their experiences of the approval process, (same video in both) a parent speaker who had a adopted their kids. This was the most valuable part for me and really brought it all to life. A talk from the team managers in the region and then questions and answers as a group. After that it was the chance to ask questions individually. We then went to a one adoption open evening in another region north of us...this one felt a lot more formal. There was a different video this time. I liked this one as it focussed on older kids who’d been in their family since they were small and they spoke a lot about how they felt as adoptees. Then there was an open Q and A. It didn’t feel overly encouraging. They mentioned issues with staffing capacity in an answer to a question. I suspect reading between the lines (and their ofsted reports online) that they were not necessarily crying out for adopters. They placed very few children a year (less than 10) In the other region they had double the amount of children waiting (over a hundred) as there were parents approved and they did say that they’re actively recruiting.

OP I’m wondering if you’re in the same region as me (don’t want to give too much away on public board) so feel free to PM me if you’d like

Some areas seem to have more children than others, no idea what that is. Our area was also in a consortium and we went to an event which featured children from the other areas.

Thankyou all of you for your very helpful replies.. they are really appreciated! I guess it'll have to be a case of just wait and see what happens. . But you've all given us a good idea on what kind of things to expect.
I suppose January will be here before we know it but at the same time it seems like forever thankyou all again

I went to several - around 7 or 8 in total (mostly LAs and one charity), this was a couple of years ago. They mostly followed a fairly similar format - a presentation by SWs on adoption and types of children up for adoption, what you need to consider for adoption etc.; at some an adopter would talk about their experience; a question and answer time; and finally a chance to speak individually to the SWs. I generally found the evenings generally informative and very honest and I was able to get a good feel for the LAs - some far better than others.

I did wonder though if they were trying to weed out potential adopters at the events as they were very forthcoming with challenges and really stressed how difficult it was.

I prepared a list of questions beforehand and would find a SW after the formal presentation to chat with. I found this the most useful part of each evening.

Thankyou sunnymam just wishing it would hurry up now..youve all been so helpful xx