LinkMaker

[TwoMamasJourney]

Hi, we're currently on LinkMaker and would like to connect privately with people that have successfully adopted through LinkMaker and could share their thoughts and experience with us. Thank you.

We were matched via link maker, but it was during the period where we could only see children under the same agency/local authority. If I hadn’t messaged and shown and interest I don’t think we would have been matched to be honest.

Happy to answer any questions - seems to be lots of unspoken etiquette which was never explains to us, such as not showing an interest in more than one child at a time etc but okay for the family finders to spam you about profiles their working on. Long delays between messages and lots of dead ends - a bit like applying for a job, sometimes you hear nothing back, sometimes there’s a small exchange, sometimes you have a full blown interview and it doesn’t go anywhere for various reasons.

family finding was the hardest part of the process for us. I wish we had invested less time, trusted the process and been kinder to ourselves during that period of time. Instead we tried to drive a lot of it and to be honest it caused unnecessary stress as you have no control really and it happens when it happens.

Hi feel free to pm me also 2 mom family matched through link maker. Found it bit overwhelming tbh and our match ended up being from a family finder approaching us on there rather than us showing an interest.

We were matched via Linkmaker and I’m happy to share a bit about our experience, although I’m guessing it isn’t typical.

I don’t know how the algorithms work but our kids‘ profile was the first one we saw when we logged in. I read from the subsequent reports that their profile went live the same day as ours.

We had expected to be looking for much younger children - and probably only one - but here they were, a pair of “older” siblings, and for some reason we both felt an instant connection.

Of course we read through hundreds of other profiles. I think we could see around 300 when we would log in. We read every single one.

We expressed interest in one or two other possible matches in case the first one didn’t come off. And social workers contacted us about a couple of possible matches, although they tended to be kids with complex needs and we had to be realistic and honest about our ability to explore them further.

I can’t say I ever got the hang of the etiquette involved. We just tried to be honest (with ourselves and the social workers we were dealing with) and to respond quickly. But we always held out hope for the first profile and couldn’t get that out of our minds when discussing other possible matches.

After expressing an interest in the match, we had to answer various questions via Linkmaker (especially as we live in a flat and these are very active kids). We were visited by their social worker and family finder after which we were told that we were the preferred choice.

We had a meeting with their foster carer. Meetings with their teachers, GP, health visitor and LAC nurse followed. There was an information sharing day and an observation.

And amazingly it happened for us.