How taxing is the adoption process?

[RolytheRhino]

I've always been very interested in adoption- I feel very strongly that children all deserve a safe, living and permanent family and am aware of a huge shortage of adoptive parents. We have one birth daughter who is coming up to 1.5 years old and are thinking of adding another to our family, but I am really not looking forward to the whole pregnancy process again and am considering waiting a couple of years and then looking into adoption instead. I've done a bit of research and am familiar with the process on paper. I know we wouldn't be likely to get a baby and am OK with that. However, I've heard that the process is very stressful and difficult and that you're really put under the microscope. I think we're good parents but we're definitely not perfect, much as we try- how much is expected of prospective adopters? How hard is it to qualify?

The process is not as hard as it seems. Yes it’s quite invasive, but not in an uncomfortable way (if that makes any sense!) The social worker will ask you a lot of personal questions, want to discuss your parenting styles , your marriage and right back to your childhoods and how they’ve effected the way you parent now. They’ll want information from your manager confirming who you are, and what I’ll want to speak to your daughters nursery (if she’s in one). Any adopted child (even one removed at birth) will suffer trauma, even if they’re removed at birth. You’ll have to seriously consider what effect this can have on your existing child. The main issues you’re likely to have is that most social workers like to have at least two years between children, so you might have a long wait. The best thing you can do is to contact your local authority (and any adoption agencies in the area), and see if they’ve got an open day coming up. You’ll be able to go along and talk to people and get a feel for it. It’s a wonderful thing to do, but it is hard work! It’s totally worth it though!

they don't want perfect parents, but will be looking for certain things. On a practical level, secure accommodation with enough space, financial stabilty, capacity to have up to a year adoption leave, possibly capacity to go part time,
Personal qualities such as resilience, patience, resourcefulness, flexibilty p.
I think its fairer to say that people's experience of the process varies greatly. Some people sail through. So much depends on your relationship with your social worker and whether you get on, I had quite a tough time with my first SW and had to leave the LA and start again. The second agency was much better.
Some people have particular issues they need to work through. But most people get there in the end.

Thank you both, it's good to know it's not necessarily horrendous. I think we'll go to an open day, as Think suggested.

To be honest I did find the adoption process taxing and v stressful. Though we seem to have to do everything the hard way and adoption was no different.

It was a long and at times frustrating process but no where near as bad as we were expecting, kept waiting for it to get really hard but it didn't

You have to be prepared for things to get very personal but again it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, was quite therapeutic

I found the process relatively easy (except for matching, which was very hard). However, we had had about 6 years of fertility treatment and waiting for donor eggs etc and so adoption process seemed easier compared to that.

I'd also say that parenting children with additional needs is the really hard bit.

Not nearly as hard as being a parent 😂

@Strugglingmum73

I suppose that's the other question- how much harder is parenting an adopted child? Parenting our existing DC isn't always easy- we learn as we go and each stage has its own challenges- but I imagine it's a whole different ballgame when you're parenting an adopted DC. Particularly if they have moderate/severe additional needs, as I'd imagine most do.

Parenting an adopted child is different on so many levels. I have a birth daughter 15 and an adopted daughter 5. Adopted daughter has been diagnosed with autism and spd, will 99% get adhd diagnosis next year. She's in reception now but might have to move to a special school. She has extreme behavioural problems and tbh every single day pushes me to the absolute limit. Plus then all the other adoption stuff on top, like managing her life story, dealing with the loss of birth family. All the extra appointments and planning for what nursery, what school, can they manage out of school activities etc. We can't go on days out because she can't manage it. I can't even go into a shop with her. Not saying everyone's experience is this hard, but do you want to be a parent to a child with additional needs? It's extremely isolating and your friends and family will often drift away and leave you to it. Plus what the birth child has to deal with .. it's the unknowns with adoption. Adopted child might be plain sailing, or it might be other end of the scale like me where it's taken a massive toll on me and my mental heath

I agree, the process is a piece of cake compared to parenting!

I think this board is pretty realistic about the ups and downs of adoptive parenting. There's plenty of us who have generally positive and good lives, with the added complications of adoption issues, there's a few that have very difficult family lives, some other forums present the latter as if it's universal. I've heard people speak of adoptive families where it's all sunshine and rainbows, and perfect, but I've never met one- adoptions lends an additional challenge to an already difficult task of parenting. That's not to say it's not worth it, but it's unlikely to be unchallenging parenting. People refer to it as 'parenting plus' and that's it, I find the kids just need MORE.

I have 2 children 2 years apart eldest is a birth child and youngest is adopted. Parenting my birth child is so much easier. My youngest has same challenges that come with development but grief and loss and trauma on top. He won’t be diagnosed with anything (at the moment) but trauma can make him violent, defiant and anxious all at the same time. Imagine being terrified of the people you live with? Yet want the love,attention, closeness and nurture that young child need for their wellbeing? That’s my son.

The adoption process for me was easy. Answer questions honestly then move on to panel. Matching was hard. Is this the right child for us?

Parenting an adopted child is so difficult. Nothing in comparison to my birth child

Thank you to @121Sarah121 @taketotheskye and @endofacentury for your honest accounts of life adoptive parents. You've given me a lot to think about. I hope life gets easier for you and your children Sarah and Century.

We're waiting to be matched, but here's what we've learned so far.
They're looking for honesty first and foremost and if you can demonstrate you have a fair amount of common sense and understanding of the challenges you're likely to encounter then you're halfway there.
They do ask a lot of questions but for good reason because the last thing anyone wants is for the adoption to break down and the child having to deal with yet another rejection.
Can you support a child with potential additional needs; FASD, a learning disability, sexual abuse etc.? Be honest and realistic about what you can manage. That is a guaranteed question.
Lastly I would advise you to do a bit of research. Read about attachments and adoption from the child's point of view (The Primal Wound) and check out different agencies. We called four adoption agencies and our local authority to get a feel of what they were like. Two agencies (Barnardos and Family Futures) talked to us for more than an hour and followed up. Our local authority and the others literally treated us like a nuisance call and couldn't wait to hang up.

I think it depends on several factors. Some find the intrusiveness of the process hard. If you yourself have experienced an adverse childhood, it can be hard to have to revisit painful memories. However, I found it quite healing and because of the process I have addressed things I thought were long dealt with. So there’s that. Our experience on our adoption journey has been horrendous. It has nothing to do with the process but the agency steering that process. We’ve slipped through the net and with the heavy workloads for the social workers who are already at full capacity and no shortage of children needing homes, we’ve found the most taxing thing to be the chasing, social workers constantly forgetting to send us paperwork or getting us mixed up with other adopters. We have been misled and misinformed often only having contradictory advice to work with and we have been in the process for twice as long as we should have. All because of the agency. We refer to certain situations as ‘social workers going rogue’ because they seem to just do and say what they want, despite the agency instructing them to work a certain way. Old habits die hard. We wish we’d done our research before hand. It’s really important that you have a good agency behind you and the rest should be much smoother. Good luck 😊

As other people say experiences vary, depending on many factors and your own personality. For us the whole process felt like forever, even thought it only took 1 year and half from the open day to the children moving in with us. However, we are relatively impatient people who like things to be well organised and move along efficiently. We found that social services are not like that and the experience that we had was of chaos, a general lack of organisation and a lack of professionalism and accountability by some social workers.

For us the most stressful part of the process was matching. Looking back, stage 1 and 2 of the process (i.e. being assessed and approved as prospective adoptive parents) was really easy compared to matching even though at the time stage 1 and 2 felt really intrusive and stressful. Our social worker also challenged us a bit and we had to do certain things to be approved (for example, obtaining more childcare experience through volunteering with children for about 6 months, even though both of us already had experience with children - even more experience than many biological parents we know).

During matching the difficult part is investing time, effort and emotions expressing interest in children, and then getting no response from social workers or being linked with a child and discussions progressing a lot, but things not working out at the end due to the factors outside of your control.

However, after all of this and finally adopting we were one of the people that experienced all sunshine and rainbows. Even though we had understandably prepared ourselves for the worst (due to all the bad experienced we read about) we adopted siblings and have experienced no serious development or psychological issues to date. Both of them settled quickly and well and it feels like we have been a family forever. When we compare them to our friends’ biological children of the same age, our kids are actually a lot easier to deal with. Maybe things will change when our kids are older, but so far we’ve had a really really positive experience with two very easy-going, friendly and resilient kids.