How To Adopt A Child In The UK

My husband and I adopted 2 children in the UK when I was 42. At the time, our children were 4 and 2.

UK adoption is very different to adoption in the US, where adoption is much more commonplace, there are private adoptions and babies are often adopted at birth.

This is not the case in the UK where adoption is rare (only about 1% of children are adopted, compared to c.4-5% in the US) and all adoptions are through local authorities (i.e. they are not private). In the UK, most adopted children are not babies, and have spent significant time in foster care, probably after a period of their life with their birth families. Consequently the life history that UK adoptees have before they are adopted often features trauma, neglect, domestic violence, or abuse, which means that adopted children struggle disproportionately with their learning, behaviour and life chances.

This is not to put anyone off adopting: adopted children are children, and they deserve all the support of a loving family. Adopting, of course, can be extremely rewarding, but it’s a reality that the parenting challenges tend to be much more significant (on average) than having children the ‘usual’ way.

The process to adopt in the UK can be broken down into the following steps:

Step 1: Attend agency introduction meetings

You attend meetings or events put on by different adoption agencies, to learn about adoption and to learn about the different agencies and what they offer.

Step 2: Select an adoption agency

Although all adopted children are placed for adoption by their local authority, they are placed with adopters who are vetted, approved and trained by agencies. There are 3 different types of agency: local authorities (LAs), regional adoption agencies (RAAs), and voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs). VAAs are all charitable organisations. As a prospective adopter, you can choose which agency you want to vet, approves and trains you. There are pro’s and con’s of each type of agency.

Step 3: Initial Registration

You must register with your chosen agency. This is called a registration of interest (or ROI). They may approve your registration and take you forward to stage 1, or they may ask you to defer while you get more experience with children, or resolve some issues (for instance, obesity can be an issue), or they may reject you. If you’re rejected, it is possible for you to apply to another agency but there are no guarantees of being accepted.

Step 4: Stage 1 Assessment

You are asked to provide a lot of information to your agency about your history, financial position, and much, much more. You’ll also be asked to provide references.

Step 5: Stage 2 Assessment

If successful at Stage 1, you are assigned a social worker to write a Prospective Adopter Report on you (and your partner, if you have one). This is a very detailed report and involves meeting with the social worker many times. Some adopters can find this process intrusive. You’ll also be asked to attend training sessions over multiple days, to learn more about adoption and prepare you for what’s to come.

Step 6: Adoption Panel

Your Prospective Adopter Report will be presented to a panel of approvers, whose job it is to decide if you are suitable to adopt a child in general, and if so, what parameters to put on your adoption. 

Step 7: Family Finding

If approved by Adoption Panel, you will be assigned a social worker or family finder to find you a family. You may get a lot of help at this stage, or you may need to do a lot of the family finding work yourself, and be proactive by attending ‘activity days’, networking with other social workers who represent children who need adopting, and using an online platform to express your interest in particular children.

You express interest in children, and if the child’s social worker likes your profile, they will request your detailed report, and may take you forward to a meeting. Eventually, you may be selected by the child’s social worker and a ‘match’ will be proposed.

Step 8: Matching Panel

If a match is proposed you have the opportunity to say no, and you should say no if you think the match isn’t right. If all parties agree the match is right, you will prepare for Matching Panel, which is another approval body who look at the child’s history and information provided by the child’s social worker, and look at your detailed report, and interview you about your ability to meet the child’s needs. If they agree that you can meet the child’s needs, they approve the match.

Step 9: Introductions to the Child/ren and Coming Home

Being introduced to your adopted child (now called Transitions, but previously called Introductions) is usually a lengthy process, and can take about 2 weeks (sometimes more). The time you spend with the child at their foster carer’s home typically increases every day as you grow more used to each other. Increasingly you will take over the care of the child as they get to know you in surroundings that are familiar to them, until they finally come home with you.

Step 10: Adoption Order

Initially, you will share parental responsibility for the child with the local authority, until the Adoption Order is granted, which often takes several months after the child comes home with you. When the Adoption Order is granted by a judge, full parental responsibility passes to you as the child’s new parent.

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For a much more detailed walk-through of the process, and how it affected us, there is a 17-part audio series about our UK adoption journey, inside The Planning Hub, which Hub members can access.