Stage 2 Assessment

[BFJAdopter]

Looking for some advice. Just started our stage 2 assessment and meetings with our social worker. She said a few things that have worried us such as: there not being many children for adoption at the moment so we could be waiting a long time... Do SW's intentionally say things like this to set expectations or 'bring you down' as we had a few similar occurrences so far.

What are others experiences with this? We we are in the East of England.

Thanks 😁

depends what your matching criteria are really. The more ' selective' you are the longer you will wait.

Its difficult to get a balance between being realistic about the level of need you can support and being open to possibilities.
I always thought I couldn't deal with autism. But in truth I had a very stereotypical view of autism. I saw my son, looked at the child, not the diagnosis, but learnt more about autism and went ahead. He is a cracking young man.
I wouldnt worry too much, but keep an open mind. If there are no suitable children in your area, after a few months you can start looking nationally anyway.

The few SW I have spoken to recently have been telling us there is currently a 3:1 excess or children waiting for homes vs approved adopters.

I'm now wondering if this is not true? (hopefully it isn't true - as horrible as that makes it for us waiting to adopt)

The numbers are pretty fluid tbh because children’s status through the process change change fairly quickly. I think SWs do try to give you a realistic sense of timescale so that you don’t walk out of approval panel expecting to be handed a child’s profile (though I know sometimes it does work that way). The period between approval and matching is pretty challenging.

There is also often a mismatch between the children that are waiting for families and the children that familes are looking for - older children, ethnic minority children, sibling groups, children with complex needs etc wait longer that the ' healthy white baby ' who is much in demand

I am also in stage two and in my area ( south) I have been consistently told by two agencies that sadly there has been an increase in children taken in to care and subsequently given a plan for adoption. This is coupled by a lack of adopters who are able to be approved and meet the criteria , not a lack of people
, willing to adopt if you know what I mean. When we were first approved we were told there were less children but more adopters but we all got approached with a match before approval panel.

Thanks everyone for your input, feeling a bit better about it. Already been so up and down during the process!