When can we apply to adopt

[laurabmummyof3]

My husband and I have always wanted to adopt and provide a safe loving home to a child in need. But we wanted to have birth children too. Anyway we have 2 (9&5) and I had 2 miscarriages a few years ago following our youngest. We both thought that pregnancy wasn't going to happen again and had decided to progress with our plans to adopt. We started to complete some of the initial adoption paper work at the beginning of the year, then I discovered we had a little surprise on the way!!!! I'm now 18 weeks and things are going well, but the adoption issue keeps coming into my head. We don't want to abandon our plans, but realise our new baby needs our full attention for the forceable future. My question is, how old does our youngest have to be before we can apply/be considered? Thanks in advance for any advice! 👍🏻

Hi Laura,

Firstly congratulations 😁 hope all goes well with this pregnancy. All LO and agencies differ with the age gap and I think they require a minimum of 2 years. They will not place a child that is older than your youngest and their are very few babies in the system so you could be looking at a long wait. I admire you for wanting to add a child to your family that hasn't had the best start in life but this could come with a wide range of problems as there is often medical/behaviour problems come with an adopted child. I would speak to your local authorities or an agency and get a feel for time scales they will best be able to guide you. Take care x

Thanks for replying Heff4lump and for your advice. 💕We will have to put this on the back burner for a little while. But I will contact my LO to get further info. I'm a teacher and feel that I could cope with behavioural probs, but I do have to consider the affect on everyone in the family. 👍🏻💕

Our LA let us apply when my birth son turned 18 months. He was two and a half years old by the time we had a child placed with us. They were strict on a minimum two year age gap with the adopted child being the youngest. Congratulations

Thanks Cassie9👍🏻hope things are going well with your little ones!💕