I often get asked "How did you find Moose?", or when we were in the process "Do you get to pick your child?" Link Maker is the website we used to find our child after being approved at our first panel. Link Maker is page after page of profiles of children who are looking for their families. I think this used to come as a paper catalogue.
I have heard the term Baby-Tinder used for the family finding part of adoption! Not the greatest term but, honestly, it is kind of what it is! I found during the whole process you have to find the light in these situations because if you don't you get stuck in the dark depths of the adoption process!
I vividly remember the night we got sent the sign-up guide for Link Maker. We had our panel on the Thursday, where we were unanimously approved to adopt. (If the decision isn't unanimous I think you wait for your official letter). Technically nothing is certain until you get your official letter anyway. The next day we got sent the link, and we eagerly set up our profile that evening.
You (and your partner if you have one) add your name, your age, and your likes & dislikes. You then go through a series of tick boxes of what you would and wouldn't accept in a child or children. We had already done this with our social worker previously, with a lot of discussion, research and advice, but at that moment you are so excited to have a child, you have to control yourself and not just 'accept' any child. It is reminding yourself again that there is a reason you have specified what you can and can't accept in a child. You would be doing a disservice to the child if you couldn't manage their needs.
In some sections, you get a 'Low/Medium/High' style option. So you may mark what level of the need you could manage. These tick boxes are things like; physical disability, global developmental delay, foetal alcohol syndrome, etc. You would also make comments on why you feel you could manage these needs. You may have experience with a certain condition for example. We both have experience with children who are neurodiverse, so autism is something we felt we could manage. But due to our house, a physical disability that impaired a child being able to walk upstairs, wouldn't have worked for us.
It feels really horrible when you first do these forms, you are rejecting children based on their needs. But when we really considered, whether we could fully support a child who had no hearing, for example, no we absolutely couldn't. I don't have any friends or family who are deaf, I don't know any sign language etc. I have no experience with children who are deaf. A friend of mine who has adopted before said "Remember, there will be people out there, looking for the child that you can not provide for"
We also mark our age range here, we were approved for 0-5 (that's story is for another blog!). And the race of the child. We selected white, British. We thought long and hard about adopting a child from a different ethnic background, but I personally would hate to raise a child not being able to fully enable them in knowing and feeling part of their culture.
When your profile is done, with your about you sections complete, (like a dating profile...) you press submit. You do all of this so that social workers and family finders can seek you out, or if you show interest in a child, they can read this and see if they think you would be a suitable match.
I wasn't quite prepared for the next page. I assumed here that our social workers would have to approve this or something. But no, we went straight to the page and were faced with profiles of children, looking for their forever families. That was very unexpected. It shocked me, to be honest. The whole process gets more and more real as you go on, which sounds like I am stating the obvious.
We spent the evening being completely overwhelmed with children's profiles, scanning and scanning them. You see a profile picture and an 'about me' section, and then below this, you get sections on the specified criteria. Basically all of the sections you noted before, disability, additional needs etc.
You naturally make a judgement based on the picture, whether that's because they are cute, or maybe you see a family resemblance. You may see they are a sibling group or a baby. You also see an age and a name.
You then read the profile, and you read about their personality, their likes and dislikes, you start to thing of how these would fit your lifestyle, and realise they could be a possible match. They have a similar heritage to you, they get on well with dogs, they love films and playing with dinosaurs. Then you read the next section, and realise they have an additional need you have always said no to.
Then it gets really hard. Our social worker was great at keeping us on the straight and narrow here. I became fully attached to a child's profile and I remember our social worker being like "Read the profile, this is something you always said no to", and it's true. It's really difficult. But we can't change these deal breakers now, as deep down they would become deal breakers again. Note...they only know as much as they can find out medically or what birth families have told social services. There are countless reasons this may be inaccurate or the information may not have been available - basically, there are always unknowns. You will also find depending on child and social worker, the profiles are vastly different.
We found our own process for viewing profiles, look at the picture, name, and age - if that fits, then we looked at the additional needs section before reading the 'about me' bio. Then we were able to hide a profile prior to getting attached to a personality, which makes it much harder.
Our social worker was incredible during this part (and the whole process, we were very lucky), and she would scan profiles for us, and send us some she noticed. We would send a list every few days of any profiles we were interested in. She gave us her thoughts. Some were a "Yes, I'll show interest for you", some were "Let's consider this first" and others were a "no, I don't think they are the right child for ___ reason". Our social worker or ourselves would then 'show interest' which sends a short message to the Child's worker, who would then check our profile out.
The process then gets frustrating at points as social workers don't always get back to you. Sometimes they say no, for no reason, others show interest back - and you then start a conversation, our social worker always took over here, and they would share documents etc. so you could find out more about each other.
Every Local Authority and Agency works differently at this point, sometimes we had a meeting with a family finder, sometimes we got sent the CPR (Child Permenacne Report) and sometimes the social worker wanted our PAR (Prospective Adopters Report) first.
Moose was different again, his social workers invited us to meet him at an Activity Day before they gave us his paperwork. Again - that story is for another time!
The selection process is long, it's demoralising. I got all of the email communications from Link Maker. That was an email every time we got a message, every time our social worker sends a message on our behalf and every time a child matches our criteria (I think only based on age and gender) is added. This can be 5 days and no emails or 15 emails each day. It got really overwhelming part way through. We had shown interest in a number of children, very few responses, and then we had got a Childs report, that we decided wasn't for us, and we had a meeting about a child, but the Child's worker pursued another match. At that stage, I asked our social worker to fully take over our Link Maker account. I couldn't keep facing rejection after becoming attached to these children. You can turn notifications off - I probably should have!
The entire process is here felt dragged out, there is no doubt there, and you spend a lot of time waiting on social workers, who have huge caseloads and many children, so sometimes you just don't hear back. This is infuriating, especially if you think you are right for the child, but I can't blame the workers as working with Moose's team, I see how stretched they are.
From the first time we saw Moose's profile we knew there was something about him, we did just kind of know he was the one. Unsure if that is how it happens for everyone, I think if I have learned one thing, this process is unique for us all.
family finding, how we found our child
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