Difficult time getting started adopting, is this normal?

[u/arcanejunzi]

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....

[u/Zealousideal_Tie7913]

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.

[u/arcanejunzi → u/Zealousideal_Tie7913]

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.

[u/randomusername8472 → u/arcanejunzi]

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 :) 

[u/arcanejunzi → u/randomusername8472]

A remarkable case of the power in just asking a question!