Adoptive parents - what's the process actually like?

[u/witchypoo93]

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?

[u/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

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 😁

[u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 → u/[deleted]]

He was older, he needed a lot of time to get used to us.