What's going on in adoption atm?

[lotsofchooksnducks]

I've just started the process of looking into adoption and 'shopping' around for agencies.

A few have told me they are not taking any potential adopters unless you are looking at a sibling group/disabled child etc.

I am a single adopter so hoping for a single child.

I had assumed that the system would be full of children at the moment as I had assumed that lockdown had lead to more MH problems & domestic violence etc and more children might have been removed?

I don't think there's any more or less than usual, it's sad whatever the reason. Our local authority is specifically recruiting those who wish to consider foster adopt, or long term guardianship and they stated single is fine. These are likely to be hard to place children though

I think it will be some time before its known whether the pandemic results in more children being removed.
However you should remember that LAs have been under enormous pressure, there are huge backlogs in the courts so everything is taking a lot longer.

Apply when you are ready,the children that are looking for families now will not be the same children by the time you are approved.
Please also remember that most adopted children have some level of additional need, every prospective adopter should be prepared to accept disability
Finally don't be put off by the words hard to place.
A child can be hard to place for many reasons. Boys are harder to place than girls, school age children are harder to place than pre schoolers, they may need to be placed out of county for security reasons. It does not mean they are inherently harder to parent.
My son ticked every hard to place box there was. Yes it's been tough, yes we have had challenges,but that's adoption. He has been a lot easier than many so called east to place children

Yes dont worry about the children of now, we are 2 years in the process now! Id defo recommend joining Adoption UK and their prospective adopter zoom meet ups are really helpful.

Children being removed doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be freed for adoption. The pandemic has tipped a lot of families who were just about managing over the edge, I’d anticipate that with good family support those families will be reunited again rather than the children removed permanently.

Even for those who do need a permanence plan, they won’t appear in court for quite some time - there’s a long legal process to go through so I’d expect to be looking probably next year before we know if there’s been an increase in permanent removal that would mean more children being adopted.

We were told that there is a huge backlog in the court system in our area, makes it seem like fewer children but actually there are many awaiting their adoption orders.

Sorry, I wasn't actually looking at children's profiles - I've just been told there are less single children waiting for adoption than usual and much more prospective adopters.
So much do that some agencies have closed their books to taking on adopters at the moment.

I suspect it very much depends on a whole variety of things, including where you are. My adoption agency in Wales is currently short of adopters. They focus very much on local recruitment though because they have to pay to put a child on the Wales wide register and pay again for them to go on the English link maker(?) register if the Wales wide one doesn't get any results.

We started the process in January last year and have had little one home 3 months. Matching took a lot longer than usual and we were told by our social worker that there were a lot less children in the system. The reason being down to lockdown - a lot of referrals are made to social services by nurseries, pre-schools, concerned neighbours etc but because of lockdown and children not getting out there’s been less referrals. Added to that the courts are massively backed up which is delaying placement orders and lockdown made people re-prioritise and want to adopt so they have far more approved adopters than children waiting for the first time ever. I know they are being far more selective at the moment and looking for prospective adopters who will take on harder to place children.

@EnergyCreatesReality

We started the process in January last year and have had little one home 3 months. Matching took a lot longer than usual and we were told by our social worker that there were a lot less children in the system. The reason being down to lockdown - a lot of referrals are made to social services by nurseries, pre-schools, concerned neighbours etc but because of lockdown and children not getting out there’s been less referrals. Added to that the courts are massively backed up which is delaying placement orders and lockdown made people re-prioritise and want to adopt so they have far more approved adopters than children waiting for the first time ever. I know they are being far more selective at the moment and looking for prospective adopters who will take on harder to place children.

Not for the first time, although I agree it's not the norm. 2015/2016 saw a huge drop in children being placed for adoption following a case where a judge had ruled that sws weren't exploring enough other options before recommending a child be placed for adoption. As a result SWs spent much more time considering extended family and for many children they were still placed for adoption, but much later. There was a lag in a corresponding drop of adopters, because nobody saw it coming. As an example, I expressed an interest in a 'hard-to-place' seven-year-old, and was told I was one of over sixty interested families. This wasn't a one-off, but a lot of family finders were too inundated to even reply. The Children who Wait magazine started featuring pages of adopters and just one or two children. Ultimately I adopted a baby because the agencies locally had closed the door on families who only wanted a baby, only assessing those prepared to consider 'hard to place' and consequently the tables turned and my adorable baby boy became hard to place, as the majority of approved adopters wanted slightly older children.

As was said upthread, the situation when you're approved will not be the same as the situation now. SWs do their best to plan for the numbers and types of children they think will be placed for adoption, with the resources they have available, but they can't know for sure. If they are saying they'll only take those who will consider siblings for now, probably due to the large numbers of adopters already waiting who are also looking for a single child, then all you can do is take some time and try again in six months or so.

sunshine are you thinking of the case in which the judge referred to adoption as draconian? Or a later one? (Just out of interest)

@sassygromit I've tried to describe it in the way it was described to me at the time and how it affected my experience as a prospective adopter. There's some context here: www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/08/18/latest-adoption-judgment-mean-social-workers/

Thanks everyone for sharing, this has been really interesting to read.

I rang our local council yesterday for more information on adoption and was told there are 9 children waiting to be placed and 30+ Potential adopters registered. They said they had previously stopped taking applications from people who already have biological children (my partner has a son) but that this restriction had recently been lifted. I was also told there were many more children “in the pipeline” but wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

My partner and I are trying to decide whether to adopt or try to have a biological child (we don’t live together yet so adoption would be 2years+ down the line if that’s what we decide).
For several reasons I have always felt that adoption was my first choice, one of those reasons being that adoption feels like the “right” thing to do as long as there are children out there who need homes, but the moral decision is proving to be quite complicated!!

Really appreciate the comments above as my phone call yesterday left me wondering if there just weren’t that many children waiting for families, and that we might be depriving parents who can’t conceive of having a family.

Will be following this thread for other people’s experiences/advice/support!

Thanks

I was also told there were many more children “in the pipeline” but wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

This will be children who have been removed from parents and where services are fairly sure that permanence will be the final plan, but they haven’t secured that through legal process yet. At any point in time children who have been freed for adoption represent a relatively small proportion of those who will eventually go on to be adopted.

@Jellycatspyjamas
I see, thanks for clarifying

"we might be depriving parents who can’t conceive of having a family"

I absolutely understand why you might feel like this, but the focus in adoption is finding a family for a child, not giving a child to people who want to parent. It'll help throughout the process if you can focus on it being all about the best interests of the child - and if you go ahead, when you're matched it's because you've been chosen, from all those potential adopters, as the best family for that child. That has to be the most important thing (frustrating as it is when you're treat as the least important link in the chain 😁)

Thanks @FoolShapeHeart, you are right and I do know this but it is easy to forget!