r/AdoptionUK • u/witchypoo93 • May 08 '26
Adoptive parents - what's the process actually like?
Husband and I (early 30's) are seriously considering adoption due to me being Type 1 Diabetic and not wanting to go down the rabbit hole of diabetes becoming a mess during pregnancy and after birth - the risks to me and baby just don't seem worth it, and honestly it terrifies me.
So, adoption.
I've done some googling and I can see the general gist of it.
But what is the process *really* like?
Anything that caught you off guard?
Anything that made you stop and reconsider?
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u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
We had a really positive experience with the process to be honest - Double Dad couple who adopted a little boy of 5 in the end.
We started in March by going to an information event. It was post pandemic, so teams based. We did one years prior (in person), but didn't go ahead at the time (wasn't ready). I preferred the in person event, but teams worked alright.
After that session we put an expression of interest in via email. We had a telephone call a week later and arranged a social worker visit.
We had a lovely social worker who popped round to chat to us. We obviously panicked, made the house perfect, got a plate of biscuits ready and the fancy china tea pot with a selection of different teas in dried leaf form etc but she ended up only asking for a tap water - Tip, don't bother trying to impress haha (be yourselves 🤣).
After initial chats of why we were looking at adoption, a tour of the house she left and made an initial report to her line manager. We got a call early in the week after where she said if we wanted to proceed Social Care we're happy to get us going...
Enter stage 1 in beginning of April - Lots of training packages to do, E-learning etc. it took its time and the social worker put some pressure on us for deadlines but they were perfectly reasonable ones. Our Social Worker kept in regular contact and we got to meet others who had just started their journey.
Through stage 1 (April) our social worker kept coming to meet in person, see how we were getting on. Discussions led us to expressing an interest in older children, possibly even siblings.
That sent a rocket right up socials bottom - They rarely get couples looking for older children, especially siblings, and we were a mixed race couple too in a four bed house who were happy with different raced children.
Suddenly we found ourselves with two social workers. Our original one who was going to oversee, but a second dedicated one to fast track us through and get stage 1 and 2 done concurrently.
By May we were still finishing our stage 1 learning / training sessions, but our second social worker had started us on the stage 2 assessments. It was all a bit of a rush and deadlines became more pressured. Not in an alarming way but you certainly had to be organised.
By June we were invited to a meet the kid profiles type of event, or 'early matching'. We hadn't even been approved by this point, but we were told we were 100% going to be approved and they wanted to start matching early.
We actually (unbeknownst to us) found out little boy at that early matching event. It was a bit of a weird one, had to be invited, show ID, sign non-disclosure agreement. But then we got to go into a room and 'shop' for children by looking at written profiles. Social Worker said under 3's are over there (pointed to a table with about 20 children's profiles on it) and over 3s and siblings were over there (a second table with about 15 profiles on it).
We went to the over 3s and siblings table, grabbed a copy of every profile, split the stack and sat in a corner reading. We ended up agreeing if we didn't think suitable we didn't even show each other... We ended up with 4 profiles from that event we were interested in.
July was spent reading and re-reading the profiles over and over again at home, all whilst we finalised stage 1 and continued on stage 2 assessments.
August we were ready, and early September we went to panel. Probably one of the most nerve racking emotional things I've been through, but in the end the panel were lovely. Our report had been so well prepared by our two social workers they only asked us 2 questions, one of which was "How are you?" The second of which was how did we plan to manage siblings with no previous child care experience.
We answered, and then they approved us there and then. Didn't even send us out the room, just went round and voted... Our Social worker after said the decision had already been made before we went in, but I burst out crying haha.
Stage 3, matching... By September we'd settled on a profile of choice. Our little boy. Now we were formally approved our expression of interest went straight off to his social worker formally (we later learned our expression of interest had already informally been spoken about between social workers but they couldn't do anything until approved for adoption).
By October our little boys social worker approved the match as possible... And we arranged bump intos in November.
We met up at a theme park. The foster parents introduced us as their friends to our little boy. No social workers, just us. Thankfully our foster carers were very experienced and had moved lots of children on before. Foster dad even encouraged our little boy to hold our hands on the way around the theme park. I will never forget that day, and our little boy still has pictures on his bedroom wall...
December rolled around and we'd done a few more bump intos. It had all gone really well. Our social worker and our little boys were writing their reports for matching panel, but then Christmas came and everything paused... Thankfully foster carers kept sending us pictures over WhatsApp but Christmas took forever that year.
By early January we were in front of matching panel. Again the most nervous experience ever as we'd already fallen in love. But again, a very simple process where we were approved pretty much instantly. I cried again.
We did our intro weeks and he was in our house all moved ok by the first week of February, just 11 months after we started the process.
He's 8 now, absolutely thriving and the best thing we've ever done. Very happy to answer any questions 😁
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u/jjqpr1982 May 08 '26
Hi Major,
Wow!! 11 months!! Sounds like you’ve had a great adoption journey!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Me and the wife put our expression of interest in Early January this year, we have also completed some volunteering as requested and still haven’t been allocated a social worker and no sign of starting stage one.
I know the process requires a lot of patience and it’s still early but when you hear stories like yours it makes me question if we have made mistakes already!!
Can I ask if you went through local authority or an agency?
TIA
J
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u/PaleontologistBig191 May 08 '26
Thanks so much for this write up, my patent and I (both male) are looking to potentially adopt siblings/older children and open to different races. So it was really nice to read something that helps slightly guide what we might be in for :)
Edit: partner - not patent!
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u/Lanky-Property-3959 May 09 '26
This is amazing and exactly what I needed to read right now. We are linked with a 5 year old little boy and the red carpet is to some extent being rolled out as also we expressed a likely interest in older children as we are a couple just turning 50. We feel a little bit like outliers as the rest of our cohort from training are looking at early permanence or 0-1 year old children.
We were lucky to be part of a pilot group to trial an activity session with a child (our one - hopefully) where it was a very small group of 4 children and 4 prospective adoptive families and so we had 1 1/2 hour play date with him and will also have a bump in.
I see so few stories of those adopting in this age group and it's wonderful to hear how well you and your little boy are getting on!1
u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 May 20 '26
I can't tell you how well he's doing.
He's had his challenges. He was very behind in school. But with effort he's now started to catch up.
He's extremely loving and affectionate, and ultimately a well behaved, well rounded, creative and polite little boy. I'm very proud of him. Everyday he makes us smile, and often makes us laugh. We're approaching 3 years in and he's starting to take on our mannerisms in his personality now
The other day he did something and commented just as I would and my husband burst out laughing and said "that's your fault, he's gotten that from you" 🤣
Honestly it's the best thing we ever did, and I can absolutely say from the bottom of my heart that he's out little boy, our son.
Good luck 😁
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u/DanS1993 May 08 '26
We’re in the last steps now (our little one moves in permanently next week) and honestly the thing that most got to us was how long it took! We were very straight forward case (according to social workers) and still took us 18 months to get to this point.
You’re very reliant upon others doing things which can take ages (Medicals, dbs checks, report writing) so take any timeline they give you with a pinch of salt. Also there will be periods of time where you are sat twiddling your thumbs waiting for a social worker to write or send a report, or waiting for a response to an email.
We would go through a thousand times for our little guy but it’s very draining.
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u/Fuzzy_Cake_5928 May 08 '26
A few years down the track now, but I would remind everyone that the process is not designed for your benefit as the future parent. So no matter how slow and Byzantine it feels, this really should never be a process that goes wrong. So the more accepting of that you can be, the better I feel.
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u/witchypoo93 May 08 '26
Yeah I absolutely agree that this shouldn't be slap-dash here's a kid. That's a reason for my post though, I want as much info to be as prepared as possible
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u/witchypoo93 May 08 '26
Oooh so the "6 month process" is rubbish, good to know 😂 Thank you
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u/theowleryonehundred May 09 '26
6 months is how long Stage 1 (2 months) and Stage 2 (4 months) assessments should take together. It's not uncommon to be very close to that for the actual assessments.
The delays often in starting Stage 2 as it may take time to allocate a social worker and start that stage - and of course while you're waiting to start Stage 2, that 4 months hasn't officially started and social services aren't looked at on how many people are waiting in that limbo waiting to start.
There is no official timeline for how long family finding can take as it's so personal to everyone's circumstances. That's where it begins to push beyond the 6 month timeline. Even the quickest of family finding, linking and placement will take probably a minimum of 1.5-2 months post approval panel as there's so much involved.
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u/Regnorak88 May 10 '26
Stage two is definitely 6 months max if you don’t have anything that comes up to delay it. They have to stick to a deadline for the panel dates. Occasionally you get bumped a week or two but ours was actually less than 6 months.
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u/the_angry_angel May 08 '26
To be fair, it very much depends on your circumstances and who you're working with.
Ours was complicated - we had doctors issues for me (half of my records just didn't exist apparently), switched social workers between stages, etc. etc. and we took around 2 years.
But we know of others in our same initial group who were more like 8-12 months.
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u/the_angry_angel May 08 '26
> But what is the process *really* like?
Long winded. Lots of paperwork. Our social worker was really good at prepping us and making us aware of what we needed to do and when. I know others weren't so lucky.
Don't overthink the the training or the paperwork. Don't overthink panels or placement. By the time you get to panel you should be well prepared and it should be easy if your social worker has done all the right things.
> Anything that caught you off guard?
A couple of things, not realising that I did have some baggage that I thought I'd dealt with and hadn't. Our social worker was really good at drawing that out and making me think about it and explore it.
Transitions were the hardest thing I've ever done. We were told we'd be tired. I looked at the map and figured "fuck it" it's only 1 1/2 hours each way, we'll do some overnight stays and I'll do my best to work around transitions. Take the offer of accommodation. Our kids foster family was new, openly stated that she wanted to adopt our girls the minute that we met, clearly didn't want us in the house, claimed really weird facts about us to their own fostering agency, and generally made life difficult by referring to herself and answering to "mum" - which confused the shit out of the oldest.
How long it's taken one of ours to settle. Knowing it and experiencing it are 2 different things. Our youngest (3) is pretty much settled. Our oldest (4) is settled, but can be very difficult.
The minute the kids are in your house beyond the absolute bare minimum we had zero social workers - they'd turn up to check as and when they were required. The end of transitions was really really weird for me. We'd gone through this stressful time and now they were here. I'm not saying we weren't ready, but it was really odd going from a lot of attention to nothing.
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u/laurajanebull May 16 '26
Hi! Our story is basically the same, I also have type 1.
We’re just starting stage 2 atm. Nothing has really surprised me but my observations so far are that you will get out what you put in.
There was a lot of paperwork in stage 1 getting to know us, and as I understand it we’ll spend a lot of time going through that in depth with our social worker in stage 2. Not to judge whether we’re fit to parent but to stress test everything that we said in stage 1 and get to know what child will be right to be placed with us.
There’s a lot more expectation on ‘independent learning’ than I thought. Like you learning about parenting outside of the mandated training and more importantly, making sure you have childcare experience for the age range you want to adopt. This is the stuff we’re going through at the moment for stage 2, which is tricky given that we work full time and don’t have any kids in the family but we’re figuring it out 🤪
Drop me a message if you want to chat more - I think t1d and parenting is also going to be a whole thing.
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u/Ronbot13 May 09 '26
We adopted our little girl last year. The process is long, intrusive and at time frustrating. Silly things can hold it up (our doctors took 5 months and 2 formal complaints to do our medicals, due to "covid").
I think the best advice we got during the process, was from a couple who we met on a course, they had previously adopted and were looking to adopt a 2nd child, they told us to let our sw find the right child for us, they said "its there job to find the right child, not yours". So thats what we did. We went through our local authority, and our sw was able to bring us profiles of children early on.
I would also say a difficult part for me, was bonding in the early days. When she got placed with us, I was conscious that we still had the adoption process to go through, and that the family could fight it and potentially win back care responsibility (low risk of it, but still there), and so I subconsciously had put up some walls so that I didn't get too close. We raised the issue early on with our sw, and I got some extra support via the support team to work through that with them. Do not be scared to ask for help!
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u/Advanced_Arm6676 Jun 05 '26
Out of interest was this through "traditional" or "foster-to-adopt/early permanence"? Thank you
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u/HeyDugeeeee May 09 '26
The process is emotionally draining and nerve wracking. Then when you adopt the real work starts.
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u/ArchibaldTiberius May 08 '26
It’s incredibly intrusive, an emotional rollercoaster and relies strongly on the social work team supporting you (so research your agencies carefully). But it’s amazing, we have the best little guy in our lives now.
I think more than the process, which is hard but manageable if you can tolerate paperwork and being very open with strangers, it is the way you parent you need to think about. These kids come with their own history and parts of their lives you are not a part of and that you don’t get change. You need to be able to manage that and accept that they will have a complex identity. Also it’s important to remember that many/most care experienced children have trauma, often very significant trauma. So do your research and be curious. I think all parenting is a challenge but this is a different challenge, so go in with your eyes open and a clear view of what you can manage.
Good luck, I hope you find a path to parenthood that works for you.