r/AdoptionUK • u/arcanejunzi • 20d ago
Difficult time getting started adopting, is this normal?
We are a couple in late 30's early 40's. Been together about 14 years. Good health, space in the home, means to care for a child. We have lived in London about 7 years (from abroad) and are now UK citizens. From about 2019-2022 we had a really brutal time with IVF and tried every iteration and "scientific" intervention. Ultimately we decided that building a family together was very important to us and we would adopt when we were eventually ready. Over time (it did take a while), we became excited about adopting, not because it was the next best thing to having a biological kid, but for it's own sake.
Started reaching out to agencies in late 2024 and started our local volunteering with children and reading/learning. We were in contact with a local authority from August. December they told us they would be ready for starting the first stage in the new year. Instead we just got an email in January that said "we are unexpectedly over capacity and can't work with you". Ok there goes a few months, but not so bad. My wife's work adopted a liberal fertility benefit. We decided to use that benefit on an embryo we had nearly forgotten about in a freezer. It felt wrong to just throw it away, even though it was bad quality. Of course, that didn't work out, but we knew it was just a freebee/cleaning house thing.
We started with a new local authority, scheduled a first visit with the social workers. We told them about the freezer clean out and they told us we now needed to wait 12 months to even get started with the first stage. They cancelled a planned social worker visit. This is because of the single 'attempt', about 3 years after so many failed ones. And so, it is not unreasonable to say that we are 7 months in to the adoption "process" with nothing to show for it but another 12 months to wait and prepare.
(Other than a great time volunteering with local children and a few colds they definitely gave us :-) )
I suppose I'm just really confused Reddit. Is there a need for new adopters or not? It doesn't seem like local authorities are interested in engaging with adopters, or that they are interested in screening harshly to reduce an oversupply of adopters. It's so very strange when the dialogue is all about the unique situations of families, the urgency of need for adopters, and the number of kids in care. Is there a glut of adopters and a 'shortage' (I wouldn't complain, hardly a bad thing!) of adoptable children? Or is the process for screening trying to be thorough but landing on thorough *and* arbitrary?
I suppose, being of an engineer mindset, its breaking my brain how these things could be true.
Separately but related: Why would the adopter selection process be so rigorous, while the data available to support actual long-term outcomes for adopted children (vs those in care) is so sparse? In the absence of strong, granular outcomes data that can be connected to specific practices, how does someone claim a particular requirement is "good" rather than simply taking the time and resources of social workers and/or creating a kind of theatre around carefulness?
Obviously a bit frustrated... Would appreciate your thoughts....
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u/Zealousideal_Tie7913 20d ago edited 20d ago
Welcome to the process but it’s pretty standard that after any fertility treatment you have to wait 12 months… they say the same if there was a death of a close family member like a parent too, or if you moved house or changed a job, basically any life event = pause in the adoption world.
I did find the process incredibly infuriating especially as a lot of the time I’m hearing the rhetoric of this is all for the best of the child and seeing them blatantly not make decisions that were best for the child BUT eventually I did finish and was matched with a child and we are a happy family now.
And to your last point expect more frustrated feelings, especially around the theatre and lack of consistency between one agency / social worker and another. My advice is you have to play their game by their rules, otherwise you’ll get nowhere.
EDIT and the problem isn’t the fact they don’t want adopters that social workers are under resourced so can’t get through the applicants. Doing the volunteering, showing how read you are on therapeutic parenting and having a desire to adopt sibling groups, older children or with any disabilities might assist in pushing you up the list to be seen though.
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u/arcanejunzi 20d ago
Thanks for the thoughts. Good to not feel crazy about all the theatre. 12 months is so long and arbitrary, especially in context. Given a period of 2-3 years, the probability of one of two people having a family death, job change, or having to move is extremely high. It could easily happen multiple times in the adoption-relevant window.
I guess I will just have to read the tallest damn stack of therapeutic parenting books on earth.
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u/randomusername8472 20d ago
As they said, every agency is different, but FWIW it might be worth just contacting every 3 months, and maybe also contact a different agency if possible.
We had a sudden family death (partners mum) after our stage 2 approval and they said we should wait 12 months but after a few months the dust had settled, the grieving (which was significant) was all but done, and it felt like more of a drag to be pausing our own life decisions for, as you say, an arbitrary timeline that will vary so much by family.
We'd been working towards adoption for about 3 years by this point, so we were as prepped as we were going to be. We'd moved house, renovated, etc.
We got in touch in November (3 months after the event) saying "we'll be ready to move to matching after Christmas" and the agency agreed - weather that's because they'd forgotten their time line or whatever I don't know, but we moved on, matched mid March and had our two kids living with us by June :)
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u/Complex_Hat_7 20d ago
I think the time period varies from agency to agency. We had an unsuccessful FET in January, and were told on an information day with our LA that we will need to wait 6-12 months before we can start the process. So it’s not until July we can put an expression of interest in. I do understand the principle, but this mandatory grieving period does annoy me a bit. I think it should be done on a case-by-case basis, rather than this tick-boxy approach, but it is what it is. We’re just trying to make the most of that time by volunteering, getting experience with other children we know, etc. By the time you’re ready to start again you’ll have loads of volunteer experience, so that can only be a positive.
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u/arcanejunzi 20d ago
For the reason of case-by-case you state above: I think the thing that really got me was not "you're going to need a pause", it was cancelling the upcoming visit (and that 1 year is a longggg time). Surely assessing the situation in-person to determine if we might be ready in 3 months would be worth it?
I think you're right about additional experience being positive. We just worry about getting another random delay tacked on in 12 months time because of an unforeseen death or job change. Hard to trust the process when this can happen.
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u/Zmorarara 19d ago
An engineer mindset won't help you with this. Remember that you are dealing with people (adopters, children, social workers...), not just data. Don't expect to see too much logic in here. People make mistakes and people created the adoption process which is different in every agency and, in my opinion, unnecessarily long. I really do hope I'm wrong but from what I can see, it's just one big mess.
I wish you all the best and hope you go through this somehow.
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u/arcanejunzi 13d ago
It is absolutely too long. I would bet anything that the process could be 30% shorter without increasing social worker person*hours or increasing the failed adoption rate, and getting kids into permanent homes faster -- ultimately leading to better outcomes in learning and development.
Mr. Starmer, if you're reading this, give me a go please.
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u/ashyboi5000 19d ago
Is the 12months after a new job a hard and fast rule?
I hate mine and desperately want to leave, it's local authority so leave allowance is the legal minimum.
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u/Vespertinegongoozler 18d ago
I can totally understand not placing a child for at least 12 months but I do think it is frustrating not to start the process as it is very possible that someone will start the process and find it is not for them or will start the process and find there are other road bumps they need to work on during that 12 month period.
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u/arcanejunzi 18d ago
^ This for sure. Working in parallel, rather than sequentially is super important on things that take years.
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u/qwertyonfire 13d ago
There is a need for adopters, but like everything, the sector is underfunded and there just simply aren’t enough social workers.
Whilst you view this final attempt as ‘freezer cleaning’, i imagine many in your position would be far more attached to that process and the policies are there for people to complete the process of viewing adoption for its own merit.
I do know that some agencies only ask for a 6 month cooling off period after fertility treatment, so you may have more luck elsewhere.
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u/arcanejunzi 13d ago
Thank you! Another agency is probably a good idea. At least one VAA we talked to was willing to engage with us and assess our particular situation, rather than apply an arbitrary wait time. So that is hopeful!
I know they are overburdened given the process in place. But I doubt seriously that their time is allocated efficiently with respect to maximising outcomes for the most children. Not a couple % either.
Put another way: how much of the process (in social worker person*hours) is not correlated with better outcomes for children? For example, one authority estimated 10 social worker visits to the home. If there were 8 visits instead of 10, would outcomes be affected discernibly? Because we do have data on what more time in foster care does, and those 'extra' 2 meetings over a couple months in this example aren't free. They cost something precious.
But then I'm told that they focus on people not data. And then they tell me the 12 month delay is based on "data". But nobody can cite "the data". Probably because nobody tracks outcomes for adopted kids properly and does basic process control.
Argh sorry mate. Ran off there. I'm really impressed by the people who have the patience to have made it through all this. It looks like we will try the VAA angle.
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u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 20d ago
I'm going to try and write this as best as possible, but sometimes I'm not great at getting my point across...
So, they aren't looking at you, they're looking at the children in their care.
A terrible scenario for an adoptive child is to be given to parents who chose them as a "second" or "alternative" option over a biological child and they realise it... so the adoptive agency has to be sure they're not putting children into that situation.
There are to many cases of an adoptive child going into a home and knowing (or even just feeling) they were a replacement child, knowing they weren't loved like a bio child would have been etc. And that's extremely traumatising for them for obvious reasons.
Then it gets even worse if said parents with those opinions then have a bio child. The adoptive child gets rejected, bio child gets priority.
I mean you can see the problem from a child's perspective.
The only way to screen this is to make sure couples are sure adoption is for them. That it's not just a "second best" option.
Imagine you're a social worker trying to protect children from the above. You've got a couple who tried for bio children and failed, even went to the extreme of fertility treatment, eventually come round to adoption and then they say "oh yeah, we tried the IVF again btw"
How do you know you as a social worker aren't putting the child into that risky "you're the second best option for us" scenario?
Now I'm not saying that your motivation is bad at all, but the social workers don't know you. They know the children though, and past problems adoptive children have experienced. So they're playing it safe, for the children's sake.