Adoption

I woke up this morning in my rush for work. I glanced at the Mother's day Cards on my mantelpiece. I had to pause for a minute. It really has happened. This is the first time in our 13 years of marriage that my wife was getting a ‘real' mother's day card. The most important one was the one from our son Joshua.

Joshua came to live with us in November 2005. We completed his adoption on the 21st of March 2006. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

My wife and I have been longing for a child for a long time. After many years of marriage, trips to Haley Street and IVF (In vitro fertilisation) without success, it dawned on us that we would have to do something.

Adoption was not an easy choice – it was not the typical thing to do. We spoke to our local Social Services; they put us in touch with the Children's Services Division. One of the social workers came to our house and discussed the procedure with us. To start with, we thought we would adopt from Africa (being Africans). She told us that we would have to bear the administration costs of the Adoption, usually about £3000 and that we would also have to go through some sort of procedure in the child's native country. She also mentioned that there are currently many Afro Caribbean children in foster homes all over the country. We carried out some further research into adopting a child from abroad, but after about 6 months we decided to proceed with a local adoption.

The procedure is very stringent! All the necessary checks are done on the adopting parent(s), by the appointed social worker. There are a number of courses which you can attend, which give you as much information as possible about the whole process. During the course, you meet some adopted children, birth parents that have given their children up for adoption and adopters who have had children placed with them. When the checks and courses are completed your social worker tells you if you have been approved for adoption or not. You are approved for a number of children of a specific age range- this approval lasts for 2 years. In our case we were approved for one or two children aged up to 24 months.

The next stage is to find the appropriate child. In our case we had to look within the borough in which we were approved for 3 months, before we could look elsewhere. We subsequently found two children a boy and a girl from another borough. The matching process then commenced - this is when our social worker and the child's social worker decided with the help of a panel if we were suitable to have the child in question. This fell through as the children had medical conditions, which were outside the remit of our approval. We saw other children but they were not really suitable and after the first experience we were very cautious.

By the time our social worker told us about Joshua we were at the tail end of our 2 years. He came just on time! The matching went well. The placing procedure then started in November 2005. We first went to see Joshua at his foster mother's place, which is just 10 minutes walk from where we live. We went to see him on a number of occasions to get to know each other and had to take a couple of weeks off work. He came to spend some time with us in our home, but spent the night at his foster mother's place. When the social workers were happy with the bonding process they allowed Joshua to come and stay finally on the 22 November last year.

The legal procedure in our case was quite straightforward as the social services already had the custody order – this means Joshua's mother had already given social services sole parental custody. After staying 10 weeks with us (during which we had regular visits from the social workers to check how he as doing) we were able to file for the Adoption Order in court. Thankfully, this was successful; we now await Joshua's new birth certificate, which will have our surname and other names we have given him. His first name is the one give to him by his mother. We decided to keep this, as it relates to his identity.

We have come a long way from when we first met the Social Worker who explained the procedure to us over three years ago – just about the time Joshua was born. During the process my wife lost a 5 month pregnancy, which delayed the process as we were not supposed to be trying for a child. All in all I believe adopting Joshua is one for the best things we have ever done. He is such a joy.

According to the NCH children's Charity there is the need for more black, Asian and black mixed-parentage to come forward, and for statutory and voluntary adoption agencies to radically improve the policy and practices they employ to recruit prospective adopters so that it becomes easier for these groups to consider adoption as an option .

The study also considers why black, Asian and black mixed-parentage children are less likely than white children to be found an adoptive family - and more likely to remain in the care system.

In particular the research reveals that:

• The impact of racism has affected people's willingness to approach agencies.
• Minority ethnic children comprise 18 per cent of all the children in care in the UK and 22 per cent of children on the national adoption register, but only 13 per cent of those adopted.
• Many ethnic minority communities have very young populations and therefore the number of potential adopters within a local authority area may only be very small.
• The scarcity of potential adopters is made worse by the problems of poverty, poor housing and language barriers.
• Finding adopters for black mixed-parentage children poses particular challenges for agencies, because of the children's sometimes-complex heritage.
• Where agencies had recruited more minority ethnic social work staff, there had been an increase in applicants.

The full report and best practice guide are available from NCH on 08457 626579. A summary of the report can be downloaded from www.nch.co.uk/findingfamilies

There is of course the deep rooted cultural stigma in our community about childlessness and adoption, which totally disregards the fact that having a child can bring an immense amount of joy into a family and that it is not only childless couples that embrace it. Some people want to enlarge their existing families while others might want to give something back to society by enabling an orphaned child to have a better life within a loving home. For children unable to be brought up by birth parents, sent to one foster home after another, it can bring a great deal of sadness and heartache. For many both children and adults alike, Adoption can be a wonderful alternative procedure where new families are created in which all the parental responsibility is transferred to the adopters and a sense of belonging is finally felt by a child.

If you would like some more information on adoption or fostering and are based in the UK please visit the following websites.

http://www.blackukonline.com/black/2406/online.html

Email: adoption@enfield.gov.uk

Website: www.enfield.gov.uk/adoption