Questions to ask a potential adoption link for a child

[Dungeh55]

Hey Everyone,

We've just passed panel and are looking at potential children to join our family. We've been on Link Maker and saw a profile we might be interested in but there is very little detail. We've expressed interest but haven't received their CPR report yet. Their agency asked if there were any questions in the meantime but I was wondering if waiting for the CPR would best before I fire across loads of questions it may already answer?

Would we look uninterested if we don't have questions yet? I'm also super eager and waiting for the CPR report is painful (very excited and impatient haha!)

Any questions you would ask?

Thanks :)

Think about any deal breakers for you, they’ll only give limited information initially but if there was anything you ruled out in your own process it might be worth asking eg significant disabilities or conditions you had said you couldn’t cope with. That way you’re not waiting for information about a child you said you wouldn’t consider. Hard as it may be this part of the process is very head over heart at least initially. Good luck.

Thank you for taking the time to respond :)

I think it's such a hard time because the silence makes you over think your every move. But you're right, it needs to be head over heart. As hard as that may be!

Hi there so looking back on our adoption journey this is definitely the stage I wish I'd have asked more questions. We went onto link maker immediately (most agencies do this after 3 months after trying to find a local match first) and because of this we had quite an overwhelming amount of potential matches to consider without much awareness of what would be useful to help us

We had a couple of quite upsetting experiences due to not really having known what to ask so my advice would be if anything at all feels ambiguous or prompts a worry in the profile do ask about it. Sometimes (understandably) profiles can use quite minimising language about an issue that ends up being quite profound. You can end up in a situation where you are quite far into a matching process before you get the real answers you need and by that point being so invested it becomes much emotionally harder to probe further

I would ask if there are any medical reports available and how much understanding and testing has been done to understand any potential developmental needs. Not necessarily so you rule them out but at least so you are prepared and can do a little research about any conditions or uncertainties and what this might mean for a child and your family as they grow up. I'd want to know as much as possible about the dynamics of their foster family. The environment theyre used to, how many moves they have had and any significant challenges which are coming up for foster family. Id want to ask how contact with birth parents has been to date to give you some sense of particular complexities linked to attachment. To be clear any adopted child will have significant attachment issues but this will tell you if their birth parent relationship has been particularly erratic or disruptive. And as jelly cat says, a very honest chat with yourself or your partner about deal breakers for you is best done at this stage before getting in too deep. We had a broken match which I think was in part due to my denial about how difficult a particular condition would be for us to manage. I let my emotions really cloud my judgement.

Best of luck. The CPR if done well can be really helpful and will prompt lots more questions. Never be afraid to ask any questions on your mind as this is one of the most important decisions you'll face in your life x

How did your match go?

we where in a similar position we had a match prior to panel for an EPP case. We had a match meeting and told to get ready, paperwork was done but then it all seemed to fall apart as I don’t think the ADM agreed they where an EPP case in the end.

we seem to be in a state of flux now, we see possible matches on link maker And enquire or vice versa. We ask questions, responses seem to take ages and then we find out they have gone with someone else. We have even been told off for using linkmaker as aparently there’s an etiquette, which no one’s thoughts to explain.

We saw one little boy and three weeks later we are still awaiting info, in the meantime they presented another EPP case where mum can’t care for baby as she has learning difficulties but they can’t even tell us what they are so we clearly can’t consider the match as it feels like their glossing over the elephant in the room.

where only 3 months in but I feel there’s zero transparency or support. Some of the children we have been shown don’t even match our pars as we have been very clear on elements we would be able to consider.

We came out of panel feeling the process had gone great and the agency were supportive and we could be confident they where child and parent focused, now we just feel like a number in a line waiting for our turn with the odd wild card thrown in for us to consider for some practise.