A while ago my sister suggested that I write a piece on adoption for National Adoption Week. I loved the idea but was worried it’d be an overwhelming task and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. However, as we chatted about it I realised that the best way to approach it would be to just interview her on the matter! My sister and brother in law adopted two wonderful boys just over two and a half years ago, so who better to speak on the subject? I only realised last week that it was National Adoption Week this week, so my sister has been an absolute super star and answered all my questions- and then some- in just a few days (legend)! I’m going to break it down into three parts, and here is the first part of the interview: The Adoption Application Process.
1) What made you decide to go down the adoption route?
It was half medical because we knew that having a baby would be a risk because of the medical conditions that I had. And it was half because of fertility issues. We didn’t get pregnant as easily as we thought- so we thought ‘why make it a long drawn out process to try and get pregnant when there are lots of other children who need homes?’. For me and my husband it was an easy decision to make; we just knew very quickly that we did not need a biological child for it to be our child, and that our family did not have to be related by blood in order for us to be a family.
2) What did the application process entail?
We went to an open evening where the social workers, and also a couple who adopted, gave talks about what the adoption process is like. After that we did an expression of interest. We then got sent a mammoth form to fill out and after we’d done that a social worker came round to our house quite quickly to talk us through making sure we were up for it and that we understood everything. (It wasn’t the house check at that point but we were aware that they were probably looking at our house at the same time!)
After that we got registered for a 4 day training course, held over 4 weeks, with 4 other couples who were all looking to adopt. (I understand ours was quite a small group.) We had to get lots of references- from friends and relatives, doctors, the bank, as well as a DBS check. Alongside that we had to do a ‘learning journal’ which was a 60 page document about why we wanted to adopt, our childhoods, our family tree, our support network… It was basically this huge document that made you evaluate and put down in writing all your thoughts and feelings about every aspect of your life. So that was quite hefty! But once we’d submitted that, that was Stage 1 done.
Stage 2 is when you have the in-depth interviews with your social worker, so we had those over about 7 weeks. She came to our house and asked detailed questions based on the learning journal and explored different things from that with us. She also had to check that our house was suitable, and we’d made it safe for children.
Then we went to Panel and got approved as adopters!
As an aside: we were shown the profiles of 2 sets of potential siblings to adopt before we were even approved as adopters. I don’t think this is the norm, but it does happen sometimes. It’s good to know that social workers are really working behind the scenes in the office, seeing what kind of children are coming in who need homes. It seemed to us that they don’t just consider those who are already approved adopters when they hope to make placements, but also those likely to be approved soon, so as to make the most suitable match.
3) How did you find the application process?
We actually found it fine- we were expecting it to be super tough but for us it was quite a smooth process. We found that it could move quite slowly at times as you couldn’t progress to Stage 2 until you’d had your checks and references back, and that got held up quite a lot by the banks etc which was quite frustrating! However, at the start of Stage 2 they set out all the dates for our interviews and the date that they wanted us to go to Panel so it seemed to move quite quickly from then. It was quite straight forward really.
4) Were there any aspects of the application process that you were worried about prior to starting?
The main aspect that we were worried about was probably my health. (An aside from me: my sister and I are both at risk of a condition that our mum had which could entail surgeries down the line). We worried that they might say something like: ‘You won’t be eligible to adopt because you might at some point need surgery and then you won’t be able to look after the children for a couple of months’. It turned out that it was silly for us to worry about it because our social worker was just very supportive. She likened it to the fact you could go out and be in a car accident tomorrow, and understood that we couldn’t even know that there would be the need for surgery (there were no guarantees I would need one or when) so that was encouraging. We felt lucky we had a cracking bond with our social worker who did all those in-depth interviews with us, as we felt able to be very open and honest with her.
5) Did you feel well supported by the professionals involved?
We felt very well supported by the social workers we had (those who ran the course in Stage 1 and the one who did our in-depth interviews in Stage 2). However, we do have friends who didn’t have such a good bond with their Stage 2 social worker and I think that was quite tough. Your social worker compiles a final report that the matching panel see, all about you, recommending you as parents etc, so if you don’t have a good bond with them then that would be hard. But ours was brilliant and seemed to understand us and we really felt she was behind us. She even chipped in at Panel with extra bits if they asked us questions and she felt there were bits we’d missed that were worth saying.
It was a little bit tougher when we got placed with our children because the children had different social workers and we didn’t feel we connected as well with them, but our social worker stayed on the scene so we could reach out to her instead if we felt we needed extra support.
6) How did your family and friends react when you told them you were considering adoption? Did their responses affect how you found the application process?
They all reacted really well when we told them we wanted to adopt! They were so supportive. In my family my mum’s cousin and my dad’s cousin both adopted children so I think that within my family it was very much seen as a great thing to do. It didn’t seem to be considered bizarre/ strange/ odd that we didn’t pursue having biological children more.
Our friends were all over the moon! Everyone was very supportive and we didn’t have a negative reaction from anyone!
7) Why did you choose to adopt siblings?
Apparently 61% of children waiting to be placed need to be placed with a brother or sister. I know lots of adoptive parents only want to adopt one child at a time, but we always knew we wanted more than one child so it made sense to go for a sibling group. That probably sped up the process for us too!
8) How long did it take from the initial application to being matched and then taking the boys home? Is that experience typical for most?
In our case it was a pretty speedy process! We initially applied to adopt- by sending in our registration of interest application form- at the end of February 2016, after we’d gone to the information evening. We went to Matching Panel and Approval Panel on the same day, in January 2017, and then we started meeting our children 2 weeks after that. So all in all, about 10 or 11 months. That seemed pretty fast to us; we weren’t expecting it to be that quick!
9) Are there any helpful resources you would recommend for anyone considering adoption, or for those supporting friends or family going through the process?
The First4Adoption website was brilliant (www.first4adoption.org.uk). During National Adoption Week, just before we applied to adopt, they released loads of really helpful and eye-opening videos including one about adoption from a dad’s point of view, and another on siblings, so I’d recommend those.
We read the book ‘Home for Good’ by Krish Kandiah and that was a deal breaker for me! It’s a Christian book and it made me see very early on that we wanted to adopt.
I would recommend ‘No Matter What’ by Sally Donovan to anyone who wants to adopt because it’s just fantastic, and so much of it echoes what happened when we got our children. It’s just brilliant! She has also written another one that’s really good called ‘The Unofficial Guide to Adoptive Parenting’.
Our families read ‘Related by Adoption’ by Hedi Argent which was really helpful. It explained the application process and also made them aware of what the children might have been through and also discussed the kind of questions that might be better not to ask (i.e. try not to delve too much etc).
I’ve found chatting with my sister about adoption really fascinating; I hope you’ve found her insights helpful too. You can find the second part of the interview at Interview with an Adopter: Becoming a Family.
Time for Tea 
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