Volunteering to demonstrate connection with children

[SMM16]

It’s been suggested that my husband and I will need to engage in some volunteering to ‘demonstrate our ability to connect with children’ despite us already having our own child. It’s not been confirmed by a SW yet as we are at the very beginning of the process but I’m intrigued to know whether anyone else has NOT volunteered but been approved at panel or NOT volunteered and then not approved because of it.

Was told to volunteer for approval panel and did (a complete box ticking waste of time imo). Was also told to volunteer at a nursery for matching. This was impossible as I had a busy 9-5 job. We still eventually got linked and approved at matching panel where I think it was briefly mentioned and brushed over.

Good luck @SMM16 . I'd get whatever experience you can, be creative and use the opportunity. I've known people challenge social workers on things generally and mostly it doesn't usually end well.

@Ted is a great person to ask about experience of volunteering with children, she did something super creative.

My husband I adopted a decade ago. When we adopted I had a lot of experience with children, and a birth child. I was still asked to do volunteering with kids and I did it. Having experience of your own child or nieces or nephews etc was not considered enough and I respected that. My husband found it harder because he works full-time (I was and am part-time). However, he also managed to get some experience which was deemed acceptable.

We are very tentatively thinking we may one day foster, or respite foster. I was involved recently in a Prayer Space with a local school at our church. You get to meet lots of children, briefly, in a supervised way (I already do the youth club so have the relevant DBS). What was really useful was I saw clearly the differences between the Reception (foundation) age children up to the top end of the school. My kids are now a low older and it all blurs. I realised I would find it better (for me) to foster children in the middle age range of primary, not the foundation stage!

Personally, I wouldn't make it an issue, just get the experience you need and learn something from it, if you can.

Good luck.

Hi @SMM16

the aforementioned Ted here.

I started a garden club at my local primary school. It took place at lunchtime because it was convinient for me, but it could have been done as an after school club. I ran it for 2 years and left them with a working garden, equipment and an ongoing project.

Agencies will differ on how much they will push this. It does seem a bit daft when you have a child but remember that your child has had a very dfferent life to an adopted child.
In my garden club nearly every child saw the school counseller, two didnt speak English when they joined. All of them were astounded to discover that you could make chips from those weird things we dug out of the earth. Yes they did not recognise a potato. This was an inner city school, high percentage of asylum seeker/ refugee children, most of them lived in flats with no outside space. Very diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion.
So its partly about getting experience of different types of children.

Thanks for the responses. I appreciate it’s an experience but it’s not necessarily something we believe is necessary. Guess we’ll see how much the SW makes of it and then make an informed decision from there. From the responses so far sounds like people do the volunteering rather than choosing not to and seeing what happens at panel

@SMM16

Just a word of advice from.an old timer
Sometimes it's best to just do what the SWs want and get on with it.

I'm not going to argue the merits or not, I think most of us have mixed feelings about it.
But remember you are not in the driving seat here, the SWs are and you are just starting out. If they don't push it great, but accept that you might need to.

I understand that, if it’s a deal breaker for them then fair enough. It’s not the right path for us if our voices won’t be taken into consideration.

@SMM16

I was going to add that the last thing you want is to go to panel and be deferred for something you could have done
I was deferred for a different reason and to be honest it was a crushing setback.

@Ted27 that’s the biggest concern- to go through the whole journey and be deferred for that reason.
I’ll wait till we have our initial conversation and then get the lay of the land. My husband and I aren’t great ‘hoop jumpers’ so adoption may not be the right route

@SMM16

sorry to have to tell you that this could be the smallest hoop to jump through.

Adoption is essentially a service for children - we are the resource.

I don’t mind a hoop if I believe in the benefit of said hoop

@SMM16 I know your pain- we had extensive experience with slightly older children, but we were still questioned a lot about experience with younger children who had a more diverse upbringing.for some bizzare reason it's hard to find people who will let you take their adopted/send child unless you already know them (lololol) and so volunteering in a setting where you would come into contact with that type of child allows you to experience face to face contact, and see the behaviour of a child in reality.

If you are looking, you could try homestart or sure start nurseries as they often have a diverse clientele.

However, if you aren't hoop jumping people, it may be a bit tricky. I will say there is a difference between being a bona fide real life in it for the hoops hoop jumper and then jumping through them because you see the bigger picture. Is it ridiculous? Probably. Will you learn something? Maybe. Are social workers testing how resourceful, creative, imaginative and thoughtful you can be? Definitely. For example, If you cant get time off work to volunteer, or don't have time in the evening, what will change when you have another child? Will your work not be flexible? Better to find that out now than halfway through the process. Are you too exhausted to do Rainbows once a week? What if your kid has undiagnosed adhd or trauma and you are in the park until 7pm? Or is it a personal thing and you don't like being told what to do (I can really relate). How are you expecting to access overstetched services intent on redirecting you backntonlower tier intervention because you didnt do xyz? Do you have the appropriate networks to sound off to, can you grit your teeth and bear it for the sake of the process? If not, what would be different about a child?

I say all of this because I was frustrated about the volunteering thing. We had so much experience but it somehow didn't count because we were paid rather than volunteering? Ugh. But then again, even just looking into opportunities put us in touch with the nursery we now send our son to. We decided tontry and maximise what we couldndonthrough a series of events, but nothing of a weekly committment. We both worked full time, but managed to work out a plan where we used training days, after school sessions and work with external organisations to enhance our childcare experiences. We drew on personal and professional networks that we still use today, and the capacity to tick boxes and jump through hoops has meant that we have been able to advocate and access services for our child that we would not have been able to otherwise.

Rightly or wrongly, adoption is a series of hoops. It's up to you to decide whether you want it enough to jump through them. You don't have to like it, or agree with it, or find it fun, or think it's right, but knowing that everyone has to do the same thing helps a bit, we found.

@Torvy thanks, that’s an interesting perspective to consider

You've had some great advice already. I agree with everything that's been said so far. I'll just add that being able to connect with one biological child is not an indicator that you can connect with children more broadly. I'm sorry, but it isn't. And I'm saying this not to be critical, but because taking this line with your sw is going to make you look foolish. For the record, I'd been a primary teacher before adopting and I still made time to volunteer while being assessed.

Also, approval panel is only one part of the process. Your social worker won't take you to panel if they don't think you will be approved. So your first task, if you do decide to pursue adoption, is to gain your sw's 'approval' . You will be asked to do all kinds of stuff that you might not think necessary but you are not going to get very far in the process if you are resistant at the first hurdle.

Finally, if you did make it through approval panel without volunteering, you can expect this to come up again at linking/matching. Will a family finder choose you or another adopter/couple who showed enough interest in children to go and do some volunteering?

How much volunteering did you all do?

I ran the club once a week for two years in term time, plus a few odd weeks.

Longer than I needed to but they were a great bunch of kids and I was very invested in a couple of them - I wanted to see them out to secondary school.

I am also a primary school teacher. I didn’t volunteer, but I did babysit friends’ children extensively and keep a detailed childcare log. Our social worker came to our house to observe us taking two kids for a trip to the park!

@WittyUsername123 when you say extensively? I have no objection to being observed whatsoever, with my own child or other people’s to demonstrate skills, I just don’t think I’m prepared to volunteer weekly at a nursery for instance.
I’m a teacher, with extensive background as a DSL

I think there are two things there. Your birth child I assume is not severely traumatised and might not have SEN. Volunteering ideally is about spending some time with children who might have some challenges your future child might have.

Panel might defer you for not having volunteering experience. If you start a fight with your social worker about this and it goes into your PAR, panel might question your willingness to listen to professionals and that could turn into a real problem for you.

We were not asked to volunteer, because our very experienced sw did not think it was necessary for us. I had cared for children of different ages from a very young age and my husband and I babysat the adopted children of friends at times. We also had had the 8 year old daughter of a friend stay with us for a week without her parents and cared for her during that time. This was many years ago though and I think there is more emphasis on volunteering now.

I completely understand OP, I am a DSL and I have been a SENCO.

As with the above, the longest stint was taking care of my two nephews for a week without their parents. It allowed me to write about comforting children away from their normal routine, etc. I babysat at least once a week and kept a detailed log.

It is a hoop, and one of the parts of ‘hoop-jumping’ as a concept is that it doesn’t always feel valuable. Applying to the ASF for example, is a pure exercise in gate-keeping. It’s important you stick to your guns if it is something that you feel strongly about, but you have to accept that that may, in turn, have consequences. In the grand scheme of your life, the assessment is quite a brief time, and it’s easy to move past it once it’s over!

We didn't have BC, and I'm not a teacher.

My volunteering was invaluable to me. I did around 2 years with a morning in a pre-school setting and an afternoon in a primary after school child care club.
It let me see a variety of children with a variety of ages, gave me loads of practice interacting, and loads of ideas on how to play with my eventual 2 DC of similar age to the volunteering. I made me so much more confident.

I had run a couple of rainbow and brownie groups in the past, worked at a summer camp in the USA, been a teacher (pastoral care/dsl etc) and helped out at beavers and scouts prior to starting the adoption process, but then when I realised volunteering was the name of the game, i pulled in a few favours and ran an exercise club for vulnerable kids at a local school once a week and babysat regularly for extended family. We also had regular meet ups with adoptive families once we started the process through WAF and NFS.

Its about what you make of it really- we visited family anyway, so they were happy to foist their kids off on us, and it wasn't a big deal to leave work on the dot every Friday and dash to the nearest primary school to do some online dance classes with some kids who loved to dance and didnt care if i made a prat of myself for half an hour with them. But the point it made to the SW was clear- you asked me to do it so I did, because you are the gate keeper to the next goal.

Do i do that now? Absolutely not. Would i do it again if it was the main barrier between me and my goal? Pass me my zumba trainers and let's go!

As other people have said, if you feel very strongly about it then hold the line, but picking a battle with SWs about the need to is a tricky one. You could argue that it would have a detrimental effect on xyz, but that's different to just not thinking you should have to because you think you already have the experience. The sw is telling you they don't think you do, and rightly or wrongly they are the ones who make the decisions at this point.

I didn’t do any volunteering, and wouldn’t have done if I had been asked - I’m a social worker and know very well how little volunteering prepares you to parent your own child and I strongly disagree with using the very right resources of third sector agencies to tick a statutory box.

In saying that, I know the system and how to pick my way through it. Social workers hold so much power over potential adopters and I consider it an abuse of that power to insist they jump through unnecessary hoops.

If they do insist, I’d be exploring exactly what they want you to gain from the experience that you don’t already have, how long they want that to be for and how you’ll evidence it.

My husband and I didn't do volunteering and we were approved at panel. I had a lot of experience working with children but my husband's experience was pretty limited. I remember us having a conversation with our social worker about him volunteering but it wasn't something she insisted on. I don't remember it coming up at panel either.

@SMM16 have you been accepted onto stage 1 already?

I applied to adopt after Covid and there was a large increase in potential adopters (I think this has dropped a lot now, possibly due to COL?)
I had spoken to the LA about adopting before and as I was a teacher and I had had lots of over night care with ND children in my family they said I was good to go re experience but I had other projects in my life I wanted to pursue so I left it a couple of years.

Then when I did formally apply I was told to go away volunteer and they wouldn't accept my registration of interest until I did. I was miffed, could see it was a delaying tactic as they didn't have any social workers, but also I was ready!
However I would say it was the most valuable aspect from all my adoption training. That's how you have to view it, self-directed training or CPD that the adoption agency get from you that they don't have to pay for. Whoever you volunteer from will be asked to provide a reference and this can be one of the most valuable pieces of evidence for your SW and the panel that you are authentic and able to connect with a wide pool of children who don't know you from Adam.

I work FT too as most people do. I volunteered in my local church in Sundays as they ran a large crèche (I'm not Christian, but am comfortable/familiar with the faith and it wasn't a focus of the crèche itself.

But the main thing I want to say is, you are going to have to wind your neck in! They don't need you. You need them. Unless you are hoping to adopt a large group of siblings (ideally BAME) or children with life-limiting conditions (yes there are people who willingly go through this process to adopt a child who is likely to die within a few years, and then they do it again!) or severe need, there is so many people who would adopt, but only if they don't have to jump through hoops.
They only need the ones that will.

Yes I pushed back on a few things with my SW, all with good humour, and I'm not remotely perfect and proud of it.

But this is the game, you don't want to play the game fine. It doesn't mean I'm a better adoptive parent than you may be, the process is ridiculously subjective, but if you are going to come across as rigid or entitled or arrogant then I think you are going to struggle to get approved. Being a 'proven' parent of a birth child is not the same skill set.

All the best if you do go ahead. Adoptive parents are the most loyal tribe and wonderfully supportive to each other, it's a special club because we do understand it is different, our children are just as wonderful, but we are different parents.

hoopjumper wise words.