Looking for advice.

[JustAnotherUsername21]

Hello everyone, brand new here so thank you in advance for any advice that may come my way.

My wife and I have always wanted to adopt and we feel ready to make this step. We are under no illusion that the process will be intrusive and throw up a whole range of emotions, I guess we can only be as ready as we can be! However the internet has all sorts of horror stories out there, so I'm just asking if anyone with previous experience may have advice on what would stop us succeeding. We are both fit and healthy with no history of mental illness, financially stable, a couple of things that I'm worrying about though...

I am an ex smoker, quit smoking almost 18months ago and quit vaping at the beginning of the year. I do have the odd one when enjoying a drink (pretty infrequent though!)

I am ex armed forces and my wife still currently serves, isn't due to be deployed for at least 3 years from now.

We don't currently have family living locally, or even near, since we both moved away for our careers but we have a very strong tight knit friendship group that we consider our family here. We are close with our own families and see them as much as we can (covid permitting!)

We have a rescue dog!

I also read somewhere that heterosexual couples are 'preferred' but being 2021 I find that very hard to believe. Being a same sex couple it has stayed in my mind... but surely that's the case?!

Does any of this scream red flag?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you to anyone who took the time to read this, sorry it's a bit long!

**Surely that's NOT the case

Hello

can’t see any issues with any thing there. Smoking is a bit if a thing so if you can I would just stop.

Inevitably the majority of adoptions will be straight couples and you can’t account for the prejudices of individual social workers, but I believe about 1 in 6 adoptions are now with same sex couples so that sounds quite healthy to me.

You might find in useful to look up New Family Social which is a support organisation for gay and lesbian families.
Did you know that there is an adoption agency specialising in forces family adoptions ? Its the SSAFA

I was also going to advise new family social, they also work directly with some agencies, so you can look at agencies who have received training from them.

Having a good social worker is really important, what you can’t control is the potential childs social worker. We had a couple at our adoption support group who was deemed not to be a suitable match for a child as they needed someone who was nurturing, the childs social worker believed only a woman could be nurturing. Being a social worker does not stop you being homophobic.

This is also a very useful resource
www.adoptionuk.org/listing/category/lgbtq-families

Good luck. I'd stop the vaping altogether, it's not worth it and may hold you up.