Considering adopting. What do we need to know?

[BlackCoffeeExtraStrong]

Hi,

Bit of background, Dw and I had ruled this out for quite a long time and were focusing on sperm donor conception. I was going to carry, as I already have a DD from previous relationship and liked the idea of her having a biological sibling.

Anyway, been getting myself 'pregnancy ready' and even had an in depth fertility check and all looked really good. For some reason though, we just never took the next step and were slowly realising that that way just isn't for us.

With the world the way it is right now, it had all been put on hold anyway, but I think we both sort of knew we'd decided that we didn't want to go down that route anymore.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I mentioned that I had been thinking about adoption a lot and DW said she'd actually been doing the same, so here we are

Firstly, I don't have any doubts that I could love a child that wasn't biologically ours. I actually always said this before I even had my DD. The thought of giving a child a safe, secure and loving home makes me very happy.

There are a few things which concern me though....

I have had depression and anxiety on and off for 20 plus years. Since puberty actually and whereas I feel in a good place now and have learnt some great coping strategies in my CBT sessions, I do worry that the adoption agency might rule us out because of this.

Also, and I don't really know how to put this, but are we able to say that we wouldn't be looking at adopting a child with severe SN? Would they even consider us if we said this?

Would just be really grateful to hear stories and advice.

Thank you

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that, but I'd say two things.

Firstly, how would you define severe SN? Our definition of what we could manage was that we would like to adopt children who would be able to live independently as adults. We're still on track for that. A large proportion of adopted children have had exposure to alcohol or drugs or both. Read up on this and see if you would be comfortable with this.

Secondly, there's a lot of developmental uncertainty in adoption. More so than the general population. This is in part because less tends to be known about the child's inutero environment and, sometimes, birth father. Are you comfortable with a level of uncertainty, and what level? That could help determine the age bracket you'd be looking at. Older children tend to mean less uncertainty.

Hope this is helpful.

hello

First of all depression won't automatically rule you out, but as with any other illness you need to be able to demonstrate how its managed, what would happen if you became ill again, are you stable.

There is nothing wrong in saying that you don't think you could manage a child with severe special needs, but it does need unpicking a bit.

What is your intrepretation of severe for example?

But what you really need to understand about adoption is how and why children end up in the care system and the potential impact that has. You need to research and understand attachment, PTSD, ASD, ADHD, FAS/D ( sorry about the alphabet soup!) developmental trauma, global development delay, learning disabilities and difficulties.
These are very typical and common issues for adopted children. Many of these are spectrum conditions and impact children differently. My son has autism for example, all the austictic young people I know are very different with a huge range of skills, abilities and difficulties.

Having a child with additional needs does not condemn you to a life of unremitting misery, many children do very well, but on their own terms.

Adoption means taking a risk. About a third of adoptions have no significant issues, a third serious/significant and about a third are like me, we bumble along with ups and downs, the downs can be very down.

Understand that there are no guarantees when adopting any child, but particularly babies. With older children it is more likely that you will have more information and issues will have been identified
Understand that you can sail through many years, for things to fall apart in the teenage years when they start questioning identity, fully understanding their history and possibly want to contact birth family.

My son has ASD, a learning difficulty, developmental trauma, sensory issues, very probably dyspraxia. He is also a fairly average stroppy teenager, he works hard at school, is a student leader, a scout, has lots of friends and makes his poor old mum a mean cup of tea.

His disabilities do not define him.
To be honest dealing with all that stuff was a piece of cake compared to supporting him through two years of emotionally traumatic and exhausting therapy.
I don't regret adopting for a nanosecond. My son is a brave and amazing young man, we have had many adventures together, its been a joy to see him grow mentally and emotionally, in confidence and self esteem. He has also pushed me to my limits. But that's adoption.

We said the same about not taking a child with severe SN. When we unpicked this with the social worker, we found we were willing to take on a wider range of needs than we initially thought.

We felt quite selfish saying no to some needs, but we had 2 BC to consider as well.

Thanks so much for the replies so far. Lots of food for thought.

@RoomForMore, yes, this is how I feel about my DD. Would you mind elaborating?

DD will be starting her GCSEs in September (presumably! ) and she does have some social issues herself and I want adopting a sibling to be a positive experience for her. That's not to say that we expect a 'perfect', smooth ride. We certainly expect challenges, but she has only really just found her feet since starting secondary school and to willingly take on a DC with a long list of complex needs, wouldn't be right for anyone.

What is the first step? Do we call our local council?

Our BC were both under 5 so we were looking at younger children/ babies. Because our BC are still completely dependent on us, we were happy to take on a child that needed maybe 1 weekly appointment somewhere, but it just wouldn't have been practical to have a child who needed multiple doctor appts a week, while ferrying our other kids to and from nursery, school and clubs etc.

We have found a balance as our AC currently has no additional needs. This might change as they grow up and develop of course.

I think you have to be realistic about the current situation, I would think few agencies are looking to recruit at the moment.
Most LAs work in consortia now, but my advice would be to shop around a bit, you don't have to use your LA and you should also look at voluntary agencies. You need to find an agency that you can trust and work with, its worth looking around

Ted27 is right. Worth checking out websites of LA's or other organisations and then make some phone calls. We didn't go through the LA where we live.

@RoomForMore, can I ask how quickly you were matched? Presumably the less issues you're prepared to take on, the longer it takes...

@Ted27, thank you. We have done a bit of research. I didn't realise there were so many agencies outside of the council.

The whole process for us from contacting the LA to having DD in our house took 14 or 15 months i think.

Did you have any matches that you decided to turn down? I hope you don't mind me asking.

We had a match that we turned down. The timing was all wrong (close family member had just died). It took another 15 months to find our DDs (with 3 other near misses along the way).

We said to be able to be in mainstream school and live as independent adults. The things we were most flexible on was a) sex and b) age.

@UnderTheNameOfSanders, does your SW advise you to be more broad or do they just accept your wishes? I suppose if these were your two main conditions, you wouldn't be matched with a very young DC, as potential issues aren't clear.

Its worth trying to be as broad as possible. Remember many of the common conditions are on a spectrum. If I had said a blanket no to autism, I'd have missed my son.
When you come to considering real children, my personal view is to look at the child and how they present, and not the diagnosis in isolation. I now of course have lots of friends with children with autism and ADHD. I'd say my son is the least impacted. Of my closest cicrcle of 5 friends, and I'm the only adopter, my son is the only one in school, let alone mainstream school. His main issues are not the ASD.
At the end of the day, SWs can show you as many profiles as they like, but you make the decision to proceed or not.
I think matching is the most difficult part of the process, its more of an art than a science, a bit of head, a bit of heart.

does your SW advise you to be more broad or do they just accept your wishes? I suppose if these were your two main conditions, you wouldn't be matched with a very young DC, as potential issues aren't clear.

Think of it as a crude form of match making. We had a tick sheet on it with various potential issues listed and had to give one of 3 possible answers: would consider, wouldn't consider, would discuss.

Some are straight forward such as Down's Syndrome. Others are trickier such as physical disabilities. Some disabilities we could easily cope like the need to wear glasses but we live in a house so a child would need to easily and safely use stairs. Medical can cover a variety of things too. The only issues we were advised to say no to where clear histories of either arson or animal abuse (we have dogs).

In a couple if one says they can cope but the other that they couldn't then they'd tick no. Most things end up being will discuss because the range that the topic covers is so wide. There's no point matching you to a child whose needs are beyond what you could cope with because the match is likely to end in disruption which is in no one's interests.

By the time you get to this stage, your SW already pretty much knows your answers to the questions based on the discussions you've had. They will guide you as you answer and take you discussions into account as they read through potential matches on your behalf.

One of our main conditions was that our LO would be able to live independently as an adult. Obviously when matching with a child/toddler there is a lot of uncertainty but you can look at the medical history of the birth family for known issues around mental health along with physical/learning disabilities as certain conditions have genetic components and whether or not the child is developing normally in foster care and currently meeting their milestones. Our LO was a year old when they came home and 8 months at the initial link and is now 4. Whilst they do have issues as a result of the broken attachments and developmental trauma they've experienced, currently they are on track to be able to live independently as an adult.

BlackCoffeeExtraStrong hi, we adopted almost 6 years ago. Here is our experience, feel free to ask anything you like.

We have a birth child who was 9 when our son joined us (he was 3, almost 4). We were not pushed to take on any challenges we felt we could not handle but we did discuss a whole raft of potential issues and basically said yes to the issues we felt we could manage.

Ironically, I was not comfortable with autism and it turned out that our birth dd was diagnosed as on the spectrum a few years after we adopted!

IMHO the biggest factor for you will be making sure the new child and your birth child can get along well enough etc because for us the biggest issue since our son came has been how well he and our birth dd do, or do not, get along!

You can call your local authority department which deals with adoption and also voluntary agencies locally; but I agree with others, no one will be recruiting at the moment. So you could use this time to read up on the reasons children come into the care system and the issues they may have.

Good luck.

SORRY - IMHO the biggest factor for you might be...

We adopted 3 years ago. It took us 13 months from the start to placement. At the time we thought this was really quick but we were actually the slowest of everyone we met along the way and other friends who adopted after us.

We actually enjoyed stages 1 and 2 but matching is tough. We had criteria relating to ethnicity which meant that there were fewer children suitable for us so we only had two links. The first fell through as the court decided the child should stay with birth parents and the second link is sitting next to me eating breakfast now. LO was 7 months when they came and the only issue we’ve had so far is my heart exploding with love everyday and wanting to cry when I talk to other people about how lucky we are!

Even though we didn’t have many links, the process of ticking boxes saying the conditions we would or wouldn’t accept was extremely difficult. In fact, we said we were open to most things but it’s still tough rejecting children, even if they are purely theoretical at that stage. We went to an exchange day which is where LAs and VAs from around the country gather and have profiles of their hard to place children. We both found this very difficult as these were real children and reading their profiles was, frankly, heartbreaking as you know that many will never find the parents they need.

Think very carefully about what you feel you can cope with and what your DC can cope with. There are so many unknowns with adoption that we won’t adopt again as I would be afraid of the impact it would have on our LO.

Best of luck with your journey.

Thank you so much for all the advice. It's really helpful to hear from actual adopters and not just read through stats etc.

@Italiangreyhound, actually my DD is likely on the spectrum too, but given we haven't needed any interventions yet, we haven't pushed for an assessment/diagnosis. This may well change in the future, but as it stands, we are just plodding along.

I do worry that DD will feel she has had her nose pushed out, but obviously we will have a lot of time to prepare and by then she will have a half sister (ex and partner), so will understand what it's like to be a sibling.

How are things now?

Still very mixed to be honest. Both kids quite quirky but I would not change adopting.

Hi ,

I'm in the first stages of adopting and doing it alone I'm trying to fill out the work book of what I'd consider and what I wouldbt ect.

I've wrote I'd rather not have a child with profound disability or life limiting conditions as I'm going to be a single parent.
I have to be real with what I can cope with but with out sounding judgmental. I've worked with children who are disabled and I know it's hard.

Any advice on the work book and questions please and also the next steps.

And the dos and donts lol

Thanks

@Italiangreyhound, glad you have no regrets Can I ask, did you bond quickly?

Yes, very quickly. but as time went on I realized I could attach more, and did, and so did he.

This is very interesting to read, thank you so much for everyone who has contributed.

DH and I are in the very early stages (nothing has been done yet we are just being open and honest with each other regarding the future of our family).

We are both early 30s with no children. I am worried that if we proceed with the adoption process this would be a red mark against us. I have epilepsy that is well controlled with medication and I am able, and do, work. I have been warned by doctors that pregnancy would be high risk and there would be a high chance of birth defects. I have decided that I do not wish to risk having a child knowing I could be bringing them into a life of uncertainty.

I feel that I may be judged for not wanting a child with issues, when actually that isn’t the case. I feel like adopting a young baby that may grow up to have problems is different to having a baby knowing that I am the reason for the problems. In my mind if a child is homeless and I have a home to offer then it makes sense for me to raise the child?

Sorry I’m not very good at writing things down!