Adoption: How did we even get here?

But first, a quick preamble... When Tom and I first started this little journey of ours, we struggled to find real life accounts of people going through the same experience as us.  That's not to say that we didn't meet others adopting, but we felt as though we may have been looking at adoption from a different angle? To be quite honest, it feels very strange to voluntarily put our lives out there on the internet, but we felt (and still feel) that there needs to be a more open conversation about adoption.  Yes, adoption's beginnings are tragic, but how it ends is arguably that much more beautiful?  There are thousands of children out there waiting to be adopted and our aim here is to help remove the remaining stigma and if you will, 'normalise' adoption.  We are not 'adoption experts', but merely two people who have happened to adopt two awesome kids.  Hope you enjoy x

I had always thought in the back of my mind that I wanted to adopt one day when the time was right, and had actually mentioned this to Tom early on in our relationship.  When we began to discuss family planning around two years ago, it was no surprise that adoption came up.  After much deliberation, birth children first, adopted children after? Adopted before birth? Foster?  

We finally landed on adopted children first, with the potential to have birth children later on if we felt it could work.  Next, was to research where to adopt from- International or Domestic? After a quick bit of research, we decided that Domestic was the right choice for us.  We have learned that children in the UK are only removed from their birth homes and put up for adoption when the situation is absolutely dire, it is a very rare occurrence when children are surrendered.

Off we went, the next step was to choose a borough from which we would adopt.  Being completely honest, finding any information from the websites (or even finding the websites from google) was to say the least, difficult.  We finally discovered that an information meeting was being held in our borough for those that wish to find out more about adoption.  Note: attending these are mandatory for most boroughs before beginning the actual process.  As the Looked After Children and Family Finding Teams are some of the busiest in the council, we were not able to ask any questions ahead of time and were simply to told to 'go to the information meeting'.    The very first thing we were told by the woman speaking was, 'if you live in this borough, then you may not adopt through this borough.' cue sighs and groans across the room.  In hindsight, if you live in a borough as small as ours, of course you can't adopt through the same borough, in a year you could be having a family meltdown in Tesco and bump into maternal grandmother in the frozen aisle.  So, if you are looking to adopt, make sure you are able to adopt from the borough holding the meeting!  We were also told that, as our borough is predominantly black and we are white, we would be waiting much longer than if we were to adopt through a 'white' borough.  Their words, not mine!  This has stuck with me since, as of now, non-white children spend up to a year longer as a Looked After Child as there are not enough families to adopt them.  Tom and I were surprised this was the case as we had already agreed that we would be open to any child, regardless of race but were rather more concerned about personalities meshing.  I still think of all the children out there that remain in foster care because they missed their chance of finding a home.  In our experience, most parents are looking for babies or children under two.  Once a child turns four, their chances of finding a family significantly decrease and if they don't find a family they are eventually moved into a permanent foster home.

Tom and I began the arduous task of finding a borough that was close, but not too close and predominantly caucasian. 'Uhhh and how white is your roster of Looked After Children?' I found myself asking on what must have been the 10th borough I'd spoken to.  All.Very.Strange. I also can't help but wonder, what about the couples who are non-white but live in rural, mostly caucasian areas, how do they find their children?  I have only lived in London since moving to the UK and I had no idea how unique London truly is in this aspect until now.  

Eventually we chose a borough that was just over an hour's drive from our home.  We submitted a Preparation pack where we gave our most basic details of work history, addresses as well as reasons for adopting.  A few weeks later we had a lovely Social Worker, who we will call Sally, come and interview us and answer any questions we had.  She then submitted her notes to the council and we were eventually approved to start Stage 1 of a two stage course.  Lovely Sally was even allocated to guide us through the in depth interviews that Stage 1 mostly consists of.  That, and a two day course led by a Senior member of the Adoption Team, a few guest speakers and was attended by about ten other couples (I should mention that this was just the case in our group, single people can adopt too!).

We spent about three months completing Stage 1, it is not something that can be raced through, but rather to be a time spent reflecting on what your childhood and family life were like, how that will affect what kind of parent you are and what are your relationships like now?  Not just your partner or your parents, but your wider circle of those that you would depend on for support further down the line should you need it.  Eight months in and all we can say is, yes, you will need it. We are incredibly happy as a family of four, but we would be lying if we said that there have not been times where we have struggled.  Becoming a parent under any circumstances is stressful and hard and above all strange, but having a friend to simply go for a walk/coffee/drink with and bring back some normality to our lives was priceless.

As we worked through Stage 1, we began to narrow down what type of child we would adopt; rough age, gender, single or part of a sibling group.  As mentioned earlier, older children struggle to find homes, but siblings spend much longer in the system due to the fact that well, it's more than one child to take on at once! In the end, we agreed that we would keep our search to two siblings, preferably both to be under four years of age.  We were clear however, that if a single child seemed like a good match for us (or us for them), then we would explore that option as well.  

In November, while still in Stage 1 we were offered to go along to a 'Siblings Event' which we attended with the attitude of getting to know some of the social workers that do the matches and in full disclosure, were just curious to know what it was all about!  It is worth mentioning here that you are told as a potential parent to not dwell much about matches  as you are still a few months away from being approved to adopt at this point in the process.  However in our case, this was when we first heard about R and E, a four year old and two year old who were currently moving their way through the system with their journey most likely ending in being put up for adoption.  They were everything we had hoped for- active, friendly, brave and enthusiastic children who had sadly been in Foster Care for over a year due to a complicated background.  We weren't even able to see a picture at this point, but we went away from what seemed a very strange experience (picture 30 couples longing to be parents with about 6 sets of siblings being available) to leaving wondering if we had just been told about our future children!  Spoiler alert- we had.

A month later, I received a phone call from Sally, saying that R and E were in fact being put up for adoption and would we like to view their CPRs?  A CPR is effectively a 50+ page document explaining every bit if information Social Services know about a child.  I called Tom non stop for about three hours, OF COURSE he was in a meeting.  Once he got home we went through each document over and over, pouring over the two photos included of each child and imagining all five of our lives, the fifth being Milo our sassy Border Terrier.  It would be a gross understatement to say that we were concerned about how he'd adapt- that however, is a post for another day!

We shortly moved on to Stage 2 of the process just after Christmas.  This consisted of more of the same, but with more focus on the types of children people thought they would like to adopt as well as more guest speakers who have various connections to adoption.  This was a bit awkward for us as we had been linked to R and E and just needed to get through the steps and onto our approval and matching panels.  Not to mention the fact that we felt a bit guilty for being 'ahead' of the others.  During this period we had a 'viewing' of the children which consisted of going to their Foster Carer's home under the guise of being friends that were visiting for tea and cake.  I would love to know what they thought of us that first day, I wonder if we came on a bit strong as to them we were just there for cake!  From my understanding, that is not how 'viewings' are normally conducted, but then I couldn't tell you what the typical viewing looks like.  Either way, it solidified our resolve to adopt these two. They were loud, chaotic, super busy, friendly and very curious about us- everything we could have wanted in two small people.  

By late February we had our Approval Meeting followed by our Match Meeting a week later.  Tom maintains he felt fine about the whole thing, but I was nervous as!  I tried on at least 7 different outfits only to shut my chosen (read: favourite) coat in the door of the car before we drove for an hour in the rain.  To be frank, I was not the calm, collected version I had hoped for when this day had finally come.  We sat down in front of the panel and spoke from the heart, giving our reasons for choosing adoption (which are unconventional, apparently) and explaining what our hopes were for the future.  In the end, we had an unanimous agreement at both panels that we should a. be approved to adopt and b. be parents to R and E.

If you had blinked for the next step you would have missed it.  We spent 7 days going back and forth from the foster carer's a 90 minute drive away.  Surreal is the only word we can think of to describe those days.  They went by quickly, but dragged on at the same time.  The point behind this transition period is to learn about the children's routine, their likes and dislikes in food and activities and any other idiosyncracy they may possess.  In our specific case, we saw a few child rearing techniques that we did not agree with and to be honest were a bit disturbed by but needed to keep our mouths shut and get to the end.  At the time, there was so much else going on that we were able to look past to the big picture but now, eight months later, where the children are every bit ours, I feel very angry that various things were not picked up on by Social Services.  That said, I believe that their foster carers are kind people and we are thankful that they were safe in their home, but the children have suffered academically and emotionally for the lack of stimulation whilst in their care.

During this time, we were given the opportunity to meet R and E's birth parents.  While I was very nervous and skeptical of the meeting, Tom was unwaveringly cool about the entire situation.  Ourselves, our Social Worker, the children's SW and birth mom attended the meeting at one of the SW's office. Overall, the meeting was amicable and nothing like I had feared.  Mom was perfectly polite and very keen to answer any questions we had about the early days as well as asking us questions.  Looking back, my regrets that day were that I didn't prepare a list of questions and that I didn't hug her goodbye as we were ushered out quite quickly.  She clearly loved her children, but was simply unable to take proper care of them- not the aggressive and angry person I had derived from the paperwork.  We promised that we would keep up with correspondence, grow out E's hair (we all agreed her current bowl cut wasn't working for her), and get R a play camera as we had both noted that he seemed very interested in taking photos we also assured her that we would take good care of R and E and never speak negatively of her and her partner to the children.  All in all, a positive experience that I'm glad we participated in and I would encourage anyone, as long as it is deemed safe, to meet birth parents if they can.

Then before we knew it, the seven days were up and we were put in charge of two helpless beings that barely knew us.  We picked them up on the morning of hand over with our new Disney CD for the car, some organic snacks, books for the journey and feeling very smug at how well we had packed for this monumental car ride.  Then E projectile vomited all over herself, car seat, and various bits of our (new) car whilst we were stuck in traffic and couldn't move.  

We quickly welcomed each other to parenthood and I climbed into the back seat to assess the damage.