"My husband and I were approved as second time adopters in July 2014 having adopted a baby girl three years ago. Our first experience of adoption was good and we considered ourselves fortunate to have been blessed with a little girl of 11 months. This was a relatively young age, knowing how long adoption court proceedings can take. Under the standard adoption route we were told we would be lucky to be placed with a child under three years, so to have a baby move in with us before her first birthday, and Christmas, was unexpected and amazing.
"As a female who had undergone seven cycles of failed IVF, I was desperate to experience the baby years and although I only had a few weeks of bottle feeding and crawling before our little girl started to walk, it was incredible to be able to share those special moments of bonding with her."
"When we received a phone call from our social worker asking how we felt about going down the fostering to adopt route, second time round, our heads were sent into a bit of a whirl! They told us that there was a very young baby boy that they were looking to place. We were so excited, but tried not to get our hopes up.
"With fostering to adopt the process is often still being contested in court so we needed to be sure of the risks. The hard truth is that a family member could come forward, or with a relinquished child the birth parents have a three-month period in which they can change their minds, or with a contested adoption the courts may decide the child should return to the birth parents. So we were quite unsure what to do. We did a lot of soul searching and weighed up the pros and cons and decided that the positives were far greater than the risks. This was our once in a lifetime opportunity to have the baby months that I had longed for. Not only that, but we had confidence in our Local Authority that if the chances were slim of the fostering to adoption working, that this baby would be put into standard foster care until the outcome for the child was more certain. So we took the gamble and are so glad that we did.
Our baby boy bonded with us from day one and we adore him. We have enjoyed watching him grow and have been privileged to experience his first moments in everything. We never had that chance with our daughter through standard adoption. It has also been amazing to see the bond between the two children grow and how loving our daughter is to our baby boy.
“If the process had not worked out, we would have been heart broken, but we felt we were strong enough to take the knock if it came. Obviously taking the risk also meant that there wouldn’t be the potential disruption for the child by them being moved from foster carer to adopters, or further foster homes.
"With fostering to adopt you are approved as adopters and also as foster carers, but you only have to undertake one assessment process. When we were contacted about taking the placement of our little boy, we literally had less than a week to prepare for a new born, most people have nine months!
“It was a shock to the system to start with, growing from a family of three to four in less than a week took some guts and serious organisation, but we had amazing support and help from friends. The last year has been tiring, sleepless nights and dirty nappies are no easy feat, but we would not change a single thing.
"We are so pleased that the Government are reforming the adoption process. They should be aware however that more needs to be done, as it is often social services who get the blame for the lengthy adoption process, it is in fact the English legal system that needs updating. If they could speed that up, more children would be placed in permanent homes much quicker than they currently are."