finding mum and dad.....

[crikeybill]

On channel 4. Holy Christ I'm sobbing. I've tried turning it over but I have to know if someone adopts them....

Whilst there may be a lot of initial interest in girls, the reality is the stats on finalised adoptions show it is about 50/50. I think last year 51% boys, 49% girls, and that barely changes year on year

So overall there isn't a majority of people who only want girls, even if a slight majority initially like the idea of a girl before they've got through the whole process

I didnt realise they were gender specific when approving? Did they give you a reason? (if that isn't too personal.. I wouldn't know why they wouldn't alllow someone to adopt a different sex so don't know if it is a personal Q or not!)

It's the prospective adopters who chose which sex they want to be approved for. Both times we said either would be great.

Sorry that was a short post as my ipad was about to die on me!

When we adopted the second time people assumed we would want to be approved for a girl as we had a boy already. We wanted the gender to be a surprise in the same way it would be if we were expecting a birth child. In the end we were matched with a girl.

My friends who ended up adopting sibling boys were initially approved for two children , either two girls or a girl and a boy. She was desperate for a daughter. They relaxed their criteria because they had been waiting so long for a match.

Although they are thrilled with their lovely boys my friend said that her desire for a daughter hasn't gone away but they don't have space for a third child. She was very sad about it for a while but has come through that now.

oh thanks misread lilka's post

if someone has a specific sex that they would prefer to adopt are their different questions etc that you get approved for?

You are expected to explain the reasons for your choices. It's a long process deciding which sex , what age group, what special needs you will and won't accept.

You have to show that you have given everything a lot of thought.

I don't mind you asking about it.

The first time I was approved, social services did actually prefer that I adopt a girl - when I expressed to my social worker that I felt more comfortable with a girl, she was pleased and so was the panel etc. However, I was approved in 1995, as a single lesbian mother, and so you should view SS attitude in that light. Things are different nearly 20 years later, but in the mid-90's, there were very very few adopters who were gay, and few single adopters either, and the professionals tended to think that a gay women should raise girls. They would have let me be approved for a boy had I insisted on either or boy only, they wouldn't have stopped me, but they were more comfortable with me adopting a girl. In 2014, I would not expect any reasonable professional to hold those attitudes.

As it was, SS opinion wasn't an issue, because I also felt more comfortable with a girl. I felt I could relate more, was more comfortable around girls, didn't feel very confident with 'boy issues'

Looking back, I would have been fine with a boy. I was not thinking realistically, I was not confident in my own parenting abilities. I would have been fine with a son. But of course, if I had my time again I would adopt my DD1 all over again!!

The second time I was approved (7 years after adopting DD1), my decision to only be approved for a girl was based solely on my existing family dynamic. I was going for an older child again, anywhere from 4 up to an 11 year old, and my DD1 did not feel very comfortable with the idea of living with a brother who was that old in the house at that point in time. Also, I now had 6 years of experience with daughters, 6 years worth of toys, some clothes etc that could be handed down (I'm not well off by any stretch of the imagination). An older girl just worked much better for us

By the time DS came along things were different as DD1 had moved out etc, and also a sibling of your children is very different to being approved for an unrelated child

I watched the programme with my DH and like many of you I was pretty emotional especially for Connor and Daniel and Scott.

We have an adopted DS who was placed with us at 4.5 yrs. He is the best thing ever and Every single day I am so thankful and grateful that we were matched. We were approved for up to 2 children and age range 2-7 years. On our group noone else wanted a boy and they all wanted younger children. We said we wanted the right child or children be that boy or girl. Yes i have had private moments when I feel sad that I nevervgot to see my sons first ever steps, that I am not the first person he called Mummy, that I didnt have an extra 4.5 years of him BUT when I have those moments they are quickly overtaken by happy tears that I have had many magical moments since he came into our lives , that before he came I never raced my supermarket trolley down the aisles, I never played air guitar or fake drums along to the radio whilst dancing round the lounge, that this little hand creeps into mine and a little voice says I love you Mummy and so,much more, and. My life would be the poorer for it,.

So as I look at my beautiful sleeping angel lets hope Scott, Connor and Daniel get their forever families soonest.

So happy for your little boy BeaLola that your little boy has the loving mummy that he deserves, as do all children of course. Your post was beautifully written.

BeaLola that is terrific to hear and I am glad you and your DS were brought together.

Watched this on catch up today and cried bucket loads. Two absolutely lovely boys. My friend adopted 2 boys several years ago who were the same age as Connor & Daniel when adopted and they are a joy. I don't know when the programme was recorded but hopefully as it's about adoption their future forever family may have been watching - who couldn't fall in love with them? The frustration of them not getting the attention at the adoption day and the foster Mums reaction to this was hard to watch.

The boys have a page on First4Adoption where people can enquire on them

Sometimes it is the adoption agency that has a preference on the sex of the child. I was approved to adopt a girl aged 0-2, and had very little choice in it.

Just watched this, so sad for the 3 boys and I hope they find 'forever homes' asap. They really were lovely children.

NanaNina can I ask why you say I think it's already been said, but there are of course hundreds of children like Daniel and Connor and Scott who are highly unlikely to be adopted. Sadly the possibility of them finding the next best thing, a permanent foster family is extremely remote...

Does this mean there are fewer long term foster carers and more short term ones?

Is it lack of money that puts off prospective foster carers?

I am sometimes confused, I have heard 'fostering' described by some as a job, but others have told me they only really receive enough money to care for the child they are fostering so it is not really a 'job'. The difference between claiming back expenses as a volunteer and being paid to do a job (please no one take offense, I don't mean it like that just trying to establish what it means).

I wonder if people will now contact the county where those boys are and will express their interest?

Naty1 I'm sorry to hear of your fertility issues. It was suggested to me that I look into adoption when we encountered fertility issues after the birth of our first child. I did. But because our DD was under 2 I needed to wait until she was older. We had a lot of fertility treatment and finally did in a sense get it out of my system. Now we are in the process of adoption but we really did need to be ready to move on from fertility treatment when we were (which in our case meant me being) ready. There is always information out there on the internet now.

DesperatelySeekingSanity thank you for explaining more about fostering. It is really interesting and actually you sound amazing! I wish more information was available and more documentary style things about this amaizng work but of course it would need to be so sensitivly done and so confidentual not sure how they would do it!

DesperatelySeekingSanity you mentioned very little post adoption support (or maybe support in general). I hear this a lot and it is bloody worrying. Why is there so little support. I know money, or lack of it, but is there anything else behind it? The idea that once adopted the children will be someone else's responsibility, that adoptive parents can sort everything out with 'love'? I know many services in the UK are strapped for cash, I feel sometimes they are not the headline hitters or the automatic response ones and I wonder if adoption finds itself in this category? And why?

susiefen not everyone wants one of each, I know of people who have adopted a boy already having a boy and people I met through the internet with all kinds of combinations.

BeaLola how beautiful. How wonderfully put. I am so glad you found each other. I hope I find my right little one.

Personally, the programme has challenged me to be genuinely more open about the child we will consider. I think this is a direct result of watching the programme. I've said I was open but was getting more restrictive as time went on! So this may well end up helping me to make a better choice for the child and for our family.

What do people think about the decision on the part of the foster careers and ss to allow the three boys to be filmed in that way?

Something sits a little uneasily with me, being so identifiable as 'hard to place'. It feels a bit 1950s documentary style for me.

It feels a bit wrong to me to have children's actual lives on telly at all which is why i hate reality tv, (jordan and that lot). But I suspect this was less about those particular boys and more about getting loads of people to see them and think exactly what everyone on here has come to post.. I'd take them. And up their numbers.. So in a way it seems kind of unethical but maybe they feel like the ends justify the means.

I've got this recorded but haven't watched it yet. I'm interested from both angles. My parents have fostered for over 30 years, since before I was born. They've done respite fostering, short term and long term fostering, sometime all at the same time... I've had over 30 foster siblings and I've witnessed, and felt for myself, the grieving process every time a foster child moves on. My mum takes it particularly badly when she doesn't approve of where they are going. She treats all the foster children as her own (sometimes I used to think better than her own!) and is incredibly over protective of them when it comes to letting go. It's just the way it is. My parents have always taken in the more difficult children, mainly special needs rather than behaviour.
I also have four adopted siblings, one through the 'normal process', three who were former foster children, all of them were 'difficult to place' children though, no waiting lists of pre-approved adopters lined up. For two of them it was my family or an unpredictable life in the care system.

I'm now in the situation of ttc our first child for over 2 years. Fertility treatment got me pg but I lost it, and no luck as yet since. Before I was in this situation myself I was one of the 'if I can't have children naturally I'll adopt, I won't put myself through IVF when there are children needing homes' but now I'm here, and I desperately want that child that would be a combination of the two of us, and to see what kind of person our mixed genes would create, I find myself heading for IVF. We're both open to adoption, and we both agree that if IVF fails we will start the adoption process, but I do feel that, if I can, I want to experience the whole parenting process from bump upwards. If it doesn't happen naturally at least I'll be entering the adoption process with my eyes wide open, having grown up seeing it from the other side.

I'm an adopter, we have a teenage birth daughter and two sons aged 4 and 1. Ours boys are not birth siblings, we have therefore been through the assessment process twice albeit with different authorities. Our 4 year old has been with us since he was 2, he's almost 5 so soon he will have been with us for 3 years and our 1 year old since he was 10 months.

I think the programme was tough but it was also never going to cover all the issues in such a short space of time. If the purpose of the programme was to raise the issue of the numbers of children in care and who may remain there then it did that. If it was to maybe create some interest in people who've thought about adopting or not then I suspect it did that as well. It didn't really though explore the wide and complex issues about what makes children 'hard to place', possibly because they may deter people where the programme sparked an interest but also maybe because the issues differ from child to child but ultimately will require an immense amount of love, time, understanding and resourcefulness from adopted parents to support the children to understand them and either learn to live with the issues or work through them.

I haven't been to an adoption party but I have been to an adoption event where every authority in my region had a stall and the walls were literally covered in photos and profiles of 100’s of children looking for forever families. At each stall we were asked simple questions that identified whether we would be classed as likely adopters for that authority, mainly were we living outside of their area and what our home was like etc. We were then asked what we were looking for in relation to children, that's tough and to be honest you need to have some idea of gender, age, sibling group and the kinds of issues you could support a child with and through. We didn't find our first son through this but we did learn an awful lot about the kinds of issues we thought we could support.

Anyway my point is simply that anything that might create an interest and start people thinking about adopting is great and if this programme results in forever families for Scott and Connor and Daniel that would be awesome! I don't have a problem with the adoption parties, being in care is tough and if the parties help kids find forever families in a way their paper profiles don't then that's a result and 20% of the kids in those parties got that result.

Finally my hat goes off to the adopters who went to these parties, getting through the assessment process isn't easy and it's an emotional and draining process full of highs and at times lows. So going to a party to meet a room full of children, remain balanced and grounded and potentially make a decision that will be life changing for you and some of the kids is a pretty amazing thing to do!

Hi ItalianGreyHound, I describe fostering as a "job" despite being paid barely enough to cover expenses - if I have one child instead of two and its winter then it doesn't even cover energy bills. I think I call it my job because of the work involved, and I do think it deserves a higher status than simply a glorified babysitter (you'd be surprised how many people, some SWs included, view it this way). I attend training and am constantly working to increase my knowledge of the problems these little children come with so I can help them deal with them.

That doesn't mean at all that I don't love the children - I really do. Plus there are lots of people out their who love their jobs and don't do it for the money.

*there not their. I wish auto correct could correct correctly!

Barkingtreefrog - I was the same, I had to go through the IVF journey to the end. In my case the end was a miscarriage and deciding never ever to put my body or emotions through that again.

I could have continued with treatment, we could have looked at surrogacy, but I had by then completely come to terms with never having a birth child. I took a year out to grieve for my lost baby and then made the call to start the adoption process.

My two DCs are my whole life now. People do ask me if I feel sad about not experiencing pregnancy and giving birth but I can honestly say I don't.

For me the moment my then 10 month old son plonked himself down on my lap at his foster carers house for the first time was the same as that moment when a mother is first handed her new born after giving birth. I know that sounds hard to believe but it really is true.

Good luck in your journey to becoming a mum.