Advice on matching process

[Anya83]

Hi , my husband and I have recently been approved to adopt . We have had two potential matches already but sadly both were not going to work for our family ( one with very complex birth parent contact that could place us at high risk, another child with much higher levels of needs than we could realistically cope with .

We are hoping to adopt a slightly older child between ages of 3-6 and we were almost led to believe that there are lots of older children in the care system for longer and in need of a forever family .

We've now been active on link maker for just over two months and are surprised how few potential matches there are . obviously I'd much prefer if no children ever had to be in the situation or needing to be adopted but it's just a real shock to us how few there are from the information we received when we first expressed interest .

So my question is ... Is link maker really the best way of finding a potential match ? We have seen only 2 children come onto the website that either aren't in a sibling group or don't have high likelihood of FASD or severe developmental difficulties . We did see one little girl we were really interested in who seemed to taken off link maker within a few days as she received so much interest from families .

So do we have to just be really active to see new children added or is there a better way ? Please note , I am very aware that all children who are being placed for adoption will fundamentally have complex needs but I am talking about such high needs such as FASD or the likelihood they will not be able to live independently in the future that would be too much for our family to manage as we also have a birth child at home .

Many thanks for any help offered

Congratulations on being approved to adopt- an exciting time!

I'm surprised you aren't finding more potential matches as this age range is usually harder to place. I'm in the Adopt East area though so perhaps different where you are. My thoughts would be that you are maybe being put off too easily by potential challenges for these children i.e. special needs, a huge advantage of this age group is having much more insight in to there health and how they may develop. I would speak with your social worker and really drill down further on your matching criteria to understand what the reservations are and whether they are going to result in a difficult matching journey...

Best of luck

I don't have any advice unfortunately, but as someone who is also in the early stages of the matching process, you're welcome to message me if you ever want someone to talk to about it. I haven't seen any CPRs yet, but I have only been on Linkmaker for a couple of weeks so I think I just need to find more patience!

If you're not finding Linkmaker very helpful, another possible avenue is going to an activity day with Coram, or an adoption exchange day where you get to see children's profiles and speak to their social workers. Could your social worker help with something like that?

Thank you both for your responses. Yes you're right , probably a conversation with our social worker and link maker is what's needed next . Yes we are thinking of attending an activity day so that might help us to get more of a real sense of children thank just static images ! Thank you again.

FASD doesn’t have to equal high needs, our oldest has FASD, he’s doing very well academically at school, he does dance to a good standard, plays ice hockey and piano, and while he is a bit behind socially, he doesn’t stand out among his age group at school.

It can be easy to look at the diagnosis, rather than the person.

If you were approved via an LA, they may well have children that never make it to Link Maker (?) If they know they have suitable parents already approved in their area then surely they would approach them first?

(Things might have changed since 'my day' as we adopted close on to 20 years ago. There are advantages to being placed by the same LA that approved you, more joined up.)

Thanks @Simonjt . Our nephew was adopted and has FASD and is nowhere near as high functioning as your son so perhaps I am making some assumptions but it does feel quite an uncertain diagnosis . Your son sounds like he is doing fantastically though .
@UnderTheNameOfSanders we have been through a voluntary adoption agency as in my professional work I've had some very bad experiences with LA's so was scared off. But we did check with our link maker today about how we can make connections before children are on link maker .

I suspect that explains it then. Local Authorities will look to place with their own adopters first, so a lot of children don't make it on to Linkmaker. Those that do are either harder to place, come from a smaller LA who don't have a pool of adopters, or in the case of my DD2, they need to be placed out of area for safety reasons.
Going through a voluntary agency can work out really well with support later on, but it does make this stage harder. I agree with other posters about being proactive with attending Activity Days etc, but I also think matching may take a while, especially if you have an existing child to consider. Good luck!