TACT brighter futures for children & young people: Our adoption experience.

We were in our very late 30s when our son was born and try as we might, I couldn’t get pregnant again. We decided that egg donation was not for us and that trying to adopt was.

My husband is an Indian Hindu brought up in Glasgow, and I am C of E white English. Neither of us is particularly religious, but we realised that targeting local authorities with a high Hindu population would probably be the best way to go. As we live in North London, we targeted those London and home county authorities first. We were disappointed by the response of all these authorities, so we went to everywhere in the UK that had a high Hindu population, but they were all saying the same thing: they could not help us due to our racial mix, and would not consider our application.

Only one London authority invited us to their open day. They gave us, and everyone else, a very professional presentation, answered all our questions, reassured us that they would definitely be interested in our application and were surprised at other authorities not being interested in us. They then rang us a couple of days later and told us that they also would not be taking our application any further because of our ethnic mix. Again we were stunned and very upset.  

In the meantime we had approached a couple of independent adoption agencies and had been sent application forms. We had completed the forms and one asked us to attend an open evening fairly promptly and the other asked us to go along for an initial assessment and interview. We attended these and liked the agency that had held the open evening. The other agency had not felt right or as interested. Letters from both confirmed our instincts. The initial agency invited us to start the training programme within a couple of months, but the other said that they would re-contact us the following year.

So we undertook the training which in itself was quite a commitment, and met some very interesting other potential adopters, none of whom had the same background as us. We were the only ones already parents to a birth child, a couple, mixed race and heterosexual. We did not know if all these factors were good or bad.

Everything was going smoothly, when out of the blue a family crisis occurred and we had a 17 year old relative of my husbands’ needing a home whilst his mother was hospitalised for an indefinite period.  After some consideration, we said he could come to us, but were devastated to find out that our adoption application would be put on hold until he left! Surely our accommodating him showed us to be just the sort of people who would be perfect to be approved as adopters. Yes, was the response, but only once he was living elsewhere! We had no idea how long this would take and caused us a lot of soul searching.

However, after seven months, his mother was discharged from hospital and our house guest moved back in with her. Our application could recommence. By now we had been in the process of trying becoming approved adopters for  two years and were now fed up, depressed and investigating the possibility of adopting from overseas, probably India. We had been advised early on in the training process to subscribe to Adoption UK and Families Who Wait. So for months we had been looking at the monthly publications of children looking for suitable families and becoming sadder at the number of children who were also waiting.

We had our home study start in October and were encouraged to discuss the possibility of an adopted brother or sister coming to our family with our five year old son. He, of course, thought it would happen by tea time! We finished our home study just before Christmas 2006; we then had to wait until March 2007 to go to adoption panel. Finally, we were approved as adopters by TACT IAS [The Adolescent and Children’s Trust and the Independent Adoption Service merged in 2007] and were so happy. Our search of the journals became more earnest, our social worker sent out our overview to authorities all over the UK. We attended open days held by different agencies. One, we were told, was specifically for mixed race families looking for suitable children. We took more days off work, arranged more child care for our son and attended. Apparently the local authorities who were attending did not know it was for mixed race kids, and no, they had no one suitable, and could not remember ever having anyone, and yes someone made a note of our details.

I left in tears and no one ever rung us back.

In November we had a phone call about a little girl who seemed perfect. Ten minutes later we had another phone call about a little boy who also seemed perfect. We urged our social worker to send out further info about us immediately. Soon after, she rang back saying the social workers of the little girl wanted to come and see us. We received further info regarding the little girl. She looked gorgeous. Better than we could have ever hoped for. Her social workers were coming in two weeks! We were so excited.

We asked what was happening with the little boy. His social workers had not replied to our social worker’s confirmation that we were interested in him.

The day arrived.  Our social worker came early to talk us through what they were likely to ask and to reassure us. We were so anxious and excited. I collected them from the station and inflicted them to a very bad case of verbal diarrhoea on the journey home. Once at our house we all had questions for each other. They had photos and lots of information and answers. Eventually we plucked up the courage to ask the vital question. How many other families were we ‘competing’ with?

‘None’ was the reply. They did not think that that was fair, so once they chose a family, they stuck with them until they proved themselves suitable or not. Can you imagine how that felt??
Unbelievable! Fantastic! And totally incredible!

The social workers told us that they had no problems with us or could foresee any problems with the adoption process. It should all be plain sailing.

Just before Christmas we went to meet the foster parents and the adoption medical advisor. In January we went to the panel to be approved as her formal adopters.  We then went back to arrange a timetable for the week of introductions. We chose half term and rented a cottage. My parents came with us to look after our son whilst we spent a lot of time getting to know our future daughter. Our son was with us for a lot of the time, but sometimes we had to be at the foster parents’ house very early and it was unfair to wake him.  We were also aware that he was on holiday and may not want to spend all his time with a baby. After a few days she came with us to the cottage, initially with her foster parents, and then just with us.

The week was a difficult time for everyone. ‘Introduction’ is a strange time.  It is exciting and it is false. It is stressful – mentally and physically draining. However, by half way through the week, she was feeling comfortable with us, so by the end of the week we were able to drive home with her and all her belongings.

During the week of introductions, the other little boy’s social workers came back to us saying that they wanted to take our application to the next stage. We declined.

She arrived home just before her first birthday. She has learnt to walk and is just starting to talk. She has stolen our hearts and completed our family. If we had had another birth child of our own we could not have loved them more.  She is such a character and has the strongest personality…which worries us slightly for the future! She is the same racial mix as our son and most people comment on how alike they are. She fits. She is part of the family and strangers do not even think twice. We were so very lucky and now so very happy that we stuck with the system even though at times it felt as though the odds were stacked against us.
In August she legally became our daughter.

www.tactcare.org.uk

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