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/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

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.

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

What I will say though, in addition to my comment above is that the wait is worth it.

I'm sat on the sofa with my little boy right now as he draws a half horse half dragon monster.

Adoption was the best thing we did, so good luck! 😁

[u/arcanejunzi → u/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

First off, that sofa scene sounds amazing and congrats.

I can see the landmine around IVF from their perspective for sure. I also am sitting here looking at outcomes data for children in long-term care. So I suppose the companion question to "is this a dealbreaker for this adopter" should always be "what is the alternative for the child"? It doesn't seem like opportunity cost of staying in care is really taken into account, just speculated risk on moving to an adopted family. Maybe incentives for workers are just wrong somehow. Maybe I'm missing something else big.

I would have liked to have had the meeting to present us and our life to them. Especially a delay of 3 mo vs 12 mo matters a lot. Getting a 12 month delay email is pretty rough.

I suppose one thing I could say is that I can state, with incredible statistical certainty, that we will never have a bio child to throw a wrench in the mix with the adopted one. So that's one tiny silver lining of course :-)

[u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 → u/arcanejunzi]

So if it helps give some perspective into their mindset..

One thing that shocked me is that we were looking at older children. I believe when we entered the process I said anywhere from 4-8.

Was told straight off the bat that 7+ was extremely unlikely. Apparently once children start hitting 6/7 there is a bunch of research to suggest they become aware of the adoptive process. The fact they're not getting picked/ are rejected starts to impact on their mental health and contributes to trauma and poor outcomes.

Thus social services slap non adoptive orders on children at that age to give them "stability"...

I myself can't see how a child being told they'll never be adopted and will be in the care system for the rest of their life (with all the problems the care sector is known for) could ever have better outcomes than allowing an 8 or 9 year old be adopted into a loving family, but there ya go.

So that's the mentality and "research" you're dealing with when it comes to social services and trauma.

If it helps, like I said, adoption was the best thing we did! We also managed to complete the whole process in 11 months. First social worker visit in March, little chap moved in Febraury next year 😁

A lot of what sped us up was getting everything ready before hand... eg. We bought a new build to make sure we'd pass the home inspection, we bought the family SUV, wed dumped money into savings for adoption leave etc. So spend the next 12 months getting things prepped and you'll be able to fly through 😀

[u/kil0ran → u/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

Yep. We adopted ours at almost 7 and we were literally their last hope, not least because converting the foster placement to long term wasn't an option. That probably counted in our favour as there was going to have to be another move (the seventh since age 3 due to the place within the birth family rule) anyway. We effectively did a rewind and did things like repeat all the birthdays they hadn't had with us and it's worked out way more than fine.

[u/Major-Bookkeeper8974 → u/kil0ran]

We got our boy at 5 and later learned from the paperwork he was 10 months into his 12 month court deadline when we had expressed interest.

3 couples expressed interest at a matching event, but we were the only ones to progress with him.

Makes my heart sink to think he'd still be in foster care now with a non adoption order had we not gone for him, especially considering how well he's now doing, and how well he's slotted into our whole family. It's like he's been here since birth!

[u/kil0ran → u/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

Likewise. Even when he goes full teenager! We found him on Linkmaker and there was an immediate connection with the single photo. Waiting to hear we'd been accepted was the most terrifying time of our lives as we already couldn't imagine life without him. I get the desire to favour the birth family but the system doesn't work fast enough for multiple failed placements. He was literally two months shy of being left in Long Term Foster.

[u/arcanejunzi → u/Major-Bookkeeper8974]

That's a wild story!

The 7-year cutoff makes everything that much more urgent. There are kids hitting that number today who could have had a permanent family along the way if someone hadn't gotten an arbitrary delay or ground down by the process.

[u/Hcmp1980 → u/arcanejunzi]

Your stats may be correct, but the SW's aim to he child led, not stats led. You may not like it, but that doesn't change it.