Frustration with pre-stage 1

[frankiet861]

Hello everyone! My partner and I are just beginning the process of (hopefully) adopting and we are in the pre-stage 1 stage. We are finding it pretty frustrating for a few reasons and I wanted to see if anyone had some advice or a similar experience?

We attended an information evening for a particular agency a few weeks ago now, and then immediately after this we followed up and said we wanted to go ahead with the process. We had to wait another two weeks for a call with the enquiries officer and it was a really nice call where we spoke about our reasons for wanting to adopt etc. After that we were sent a matching form where you talk about your thoughts about the type of child you have thought about being matched with, which we filled in, and sent back. They said if they decided we could go forward then we would need to wait another 3 weeks for an interview with the enquiries manager, and then after that they would decide whether or not we could go onto stage 1.

We then had to wait a week for a result and then they called us and said we couldn't have an initial interview at this time because I have two counselling sessions left (which would be over before the 3 weeks that we had to wait for this interview was up - i have two sessions left and it's CBT to help with a trauma we suffered earlier this year) and also that some of our answers on the matching form were not what they were looking for (ie. we had specified a gender and an age).

At no point before this did they indicate to us that they were looking for adopters who were open to both genders (which we are, the form just asked for our preferences so we indicated our preference) and age (same). Their feedback to us was that we should go and do more reading and then fill in the form again. Even as I'm typing this I'm annoyed, surely they should just tell us what they are looking for if it's specific and then if that is not acceptable to us we won't move forward? Rather than making us go through this whole process.

So I contacted another agency, and we had a call and filled in the form again. Then they came back saying that they were concerned about the lack of experience with kids that my partner has. Totally fair enough. So we've arranged to look after our niece and nephew more but we have to wait till February now to have another initial call and then another assessment process and then wait another 6 weeks to be accepted onto stage 1. And I asked how we should document our time with our niece and nephew and they said "oh you don't need to do that" so I feel like we could have just said that we had that experience and got it in the meantime and got an interview sooner.

Now we are trying another agency and again they have taken two weeks to come back to us, and we have a call with a social worker this week. I asked for a time and they couldn't give us one, just that it will be at some point on Wednesday and if we don't hear then to contact them.

At every single point through all of these experiences, the agency has taken 5 days or longer to reply to our emails, and yet we have been asked to respond within 48 hours or even sooner because appointments get booked up etc. Which I understand, but is this dynamic like this throughout the whole thing? Just a one way street where you are beholden to the agency the entire time?

I really do understand that this process needs to be child focused, and the focus isn't on us and our feelings, I get that. At the same time, it feels like they think they are doing us a favour by spending the time considering us or answering our queries. This is the biggest thing we will ever do and I think I just expected more of a personal and more sort of ... just a kinder response/process. It feels like you have to jump through hoops for things like arranging a phone call. I understand most other parts of this process will require a lot of work but surely this admin bit shouldn't be so hard?

I'm sorry for the rant, I'm just so frustrated at this point and it feels like we aren't going to get anywhere. And we haven't even started yet. Also when you look up adoption, it always says the process takes 6 months and it definitely does not. If anyone has any similar experiences or any advice we would really appreciate it. Thank you smile

@feelingverygrateful thank you for posting your story and congratulations on getting through the process and your beautiful baby x

Resilience and patience is the key . Has took me 3 years since initial enquery to being approved a year ago and stiĺll waiting for an appropriate match or being the chosen family. It's hard at times, you feel like just giving up. But if you truly want it and invested so much time and effort unfortunately you have to wait.

@HIPPYCHICK74 thank you for your response, it's been about 8 weeks now and we are nowhere despite what feels like a lot of time and effort so I think we are getting used to the fact that this is what it's going to be like. Good luck for your next stages x

We went through the process 15 years ago when it was slightly different, before official timescale targets.

It took us 15 month from contacting the agency to being approved.
Then a further 15 months from approval to hearing about our children.
Then 3.5 months before they moved in
Then 15 months from when they moved in to being legally ours.

Youi have to be very patient. But resilience is definitely needed as adoptive parents. My youngest is now 16, I have been stretched this year even more than ever (and reached breaking point at one time), and I know we have 3 major trials coming next year, any one of which would be a challenge.

I actually think it is best not to be too rushed. You need time to focus and consider what you really can cope with, and what your strategies might be.

I think maybe the form you had 'preferences' wasn't well worded. It should have said 'would be open to'. But they can't tell you what to say, otherwise they would assess people fixed on eg a girl under 3, when they only have boys over 4 coming through the system - that wouldn't help anyone.

I'm so grateful for our family, but it has been hard recently. I have really needed my 'support network'.

@UnderTheNameOfSanders thank you for all of your advice and sharing this. I really appreciate your advice about not being too rushed, I feel like that too, I just thought that they would be a bit more responsive.

Good luck with everything next year, it sounds like you have lots going on and I hope it all goes well. X

I was looking through the adpotion board hoping to see any posts that showed us we were not alone! My husband and I attended a few information meetings from different agencies and chose to contact the one we liked the most. This was at the end of June last year!

Between July-September we had an introductory phone call and a couple of initial meetings (one cancellation and rescheduled) and were told in September that they were happy to accept us into Stage 1.

However, they said we had to be put on the waiting list and realistically nothing could be started 'this side of Christmas'. They explained that they've had a huge surge of interest from adopters this year, possibly related to the pandemic; people re-evaluating their life etc etc, which we totally understood. In fact we've been thinking about adopting for years but last year, had the time and space to do the research and make the decision to take the plunge.

It's been frustrating but we liked that they were honest and realistic with us about how long it was going to take to get started, and although disappointed of course, were happy to wait. I felt like it was good to demonstrate we were patient people!

I chased them this week and it turns out that the social worker we had our initial meetings with has now left the agency. It was a bit of a knock back as we liked her and had hoped she would be our SW for stage 1.

They gave us some reading to do meanwhile, and asked us to start getting childcare experience. We have been told that we need to get intensive childcare experience, once a week for at least 6 months, roughly 27 hours, but with the lockdown I have no idea how this is even possible. It just feels like we're going to have to be patient forever, and this is just counting up to 0!

But, it's good to hear the advice to pick an agency and stick with it. Although we really liked the vibe and values of this one, we had started to wonder whether we should abandon it and try others.

@frankiet861 - you started this thread in November. Have you had any luck with progressing?

Adoption UK do a great zoom meet up regularly for prospective adopters and I dont think you even need to be a member to join in.
I wonder about for child care experience if you have any nephews/nieces/ friends kids you could suggest running a zoom kids quiz once a week for them, or offer to listen to them read, something like that, or if youve a skill you could teach on zoom run it as a zoom kids club - that would look really good as doing what you can in difficult times!? There are loads of zoom kids stuff like kids yoga, kids ballet etc, you could even do kids arts or something like cebebbies bed time stories where you read a book - age dependent of course and even a chapter book, a few times a week or something, im sure parents would be keen! Might be an idea to get you started in lockdown.
Adoption UK also have buckets of great webinars to help boost your research and preparation so a good time to do it in lockdown too.

@scully29 thanks for those ideas and suggestions, really helpful! I'll check out the adoption UK stuff too, thank you. We've lost our momentum a little so I'm sure they'd be helpful in keeping it going.

We've found the prospective adopter chats on zoom from adoption UK really helpful. The next one I think is next Tuesday evening.

We got our stage 1 pack over Christmas and are just wading through all the paperwork 😩

No next one is tomorrow at 11, although the evening one is tuesday 8 your right claireb7rg! I cant recommend adoption uk enough, its soo helpful!