Still nearly no children available for adoption?????

Thank you. I am expecting there to be conflict between the two which is one reason we were hoping to wait for a girl this time although AS is convinced he wants a brother (I think he is looking to replace the relationship he had in FC with a younger boy) but I have a feeling they are going to force it that he will have to do most of his growing up "alone" before we have a chance at a sibling and since we are older anyway (hubby 50 and me 5 years behind him) I do not think we have "that much time spare to wait".

It is a good idea for me to mention that the assessment should be a lot quicker next time though I think they are just thinking that if there really are no children that are not sibling groups, much older or with "difficulties" there is no point at all in assessing us then maintaining us on a "waiting" system for years. We may approach a few other agencies to see how the land lies there but DH is not keen on going with anyone else as he has medical issues which our current agency understand and do not have issues with (he feels other agencies might reject us out of hand due to them and then that might block our future chances with our current agency) plus he really likes and trusts our previous SW so the "relationship" is already there and he is not one for easily opening up and building new relationships with a new SW.

I was trying to work out the age gap between yours but if one is 17 and one is 11 then I assume that is a 6 year gap so your first son was 13 when your second (age 7) was placed?

Hi Sipderless,
My elder boy is actually 17.5
He was 12.5 when younger boy ( at almost 7) arrived, so there is almost 5 1/2 years between them.
We too are older adopters and thats why we didnt wait any longer,.
There are still people on here and auk forum coming on to say they have been matched, so their are kids out there still needing adoption.
I would try and get a definitive answer out of your sw as to whether a) they will definately re assess you
And b)what the chances of a placement are
I dont know if you are with a local aithority or a voluntary agency but maybe worth asking a few to see what their situation is like.
When we had been approved the first time, we waited ages, because the only child our la had as a possible for us, was going to be ages being freed for adoption as there was a long legal case, and as first timers , we didnt feel we could risk taking a child who was not yet freed for adoption.
We found ds1 via the cww magazine and probably the fact that he was 10 on placement got us our chance.
With ds2 i think we were lucky with our timing as they had a kid needing a place. They were quite quick with the approval and matching, probably because they had a child in mind. If social work have a kid they need placed, they can move fast enough (!) which is why i say ask around, you may get streamlined though one particualr authority if what you can offer suits what they are looking for.
Find put the options and see what hubby thinks about it
Best Wishes with your search

I think there might be more than 'children avaliable'. At this stage it is very difficult to judge how succesfull the first adoption will be long term. The argument wanting a sibling is very weak as adding a child is complicated and in certain ways it gets easier, more hands to do the washing up, in other ways it gets more difficult as there will be interaction between the children. Often how closer in age how more complicated the relationships. 
It might be wise to wait another 3 years or so, than your oldest has had more 1:1 time, I just pressume he's hurt as he was older at the time of adoption and probably has had several placements and rubbish experiences.
I think you need to let go of the dream child in your head,  the little babygirl who is compliant and loving and causes never problems. (do we not all somewhere deep down that perfect child, often for the illusion to be bursted the first day, lol).

Even if your oldest does not present as a special needs child, he is, just because of the trauma's he experienced, you have to prepaire yourself to add another special needs child, do not think of missing limbs or downs or something else visual, think brain damage, asd, fasd, adhd those sort of things. 
Often at placement those kids are 'normal' just a bit delayed because of neglect, than over time the diagnoses flow in. Not saying this is always the case, just be prepaired and ready to accept such child as well. 

So I can understand that ss are reluctant to place a child just now, as the last thing they are waiting for is disruption or destabelising the current placement. 
I have not read all your posts and I have no idea what your work experience is with sn children, maybe what I write does not count for in your situation. 
Anyway I would advise to wait, even with your husbands medical issues. If those issues are so big that he will not be fit in say 5 years time than questions arrise or adding a child will not be too much for you as the main carer (i pressume, your husband might need at least mental support, so than you have 3 people around you who rely on you). 

I also pressume he was not taken away from his birth parents because he was wearing dirty socks. Do not underestimate the trauma done by neglect. In fact the first 2 or 3 years in a child's life are the most important when it comes to building a healthy brain. 
If the family was 'lovely and caring', why was he placed for adoption? for sure someone in the extended family could have taken him.
This is all not the case, he was taken from his parents, he lived with foster carers from where he was moved again, it does not matter how good or bad foster care was, he could not stay there, that is another 'hurt' for a child. 
And the biggest trauma was removal from the birth mother, even if he has it 10 times better now. 
It is great you do not experience any of the behaviours hurt children display, just keep in mind that if he has a best new friend every month, if he becomes very angry, if he lies or steals, if he is very charming and friendly to everyone especially strangers, etc, etc, it might be more than just 'a rubbish friend', just a bit of anger because his bike is broken or any other excuse, there is no excuse for lying and stealing, red alarm light need to flash is a child is too good to be true outside the home and quite challenging at home. 
Loads of things you can see two ways, the controling child 'has a strong personality, is a natural leader', when a child hurts it's survival, not healthy and escalated easily in less desirable concequences. 

Ofcourse you can adopt a second child, but do not do it to get a 'friend or sibling' because your oldest wants that so desperately. Often children want things and can not oversee the concequences. Gender preferance? There are a lot more boys in care than girls, more people want girls than boys. You need to look for the child best fitting in your family, the gender is not a deciding factor here.
I would say you need an age gap more than anything, to prevent competition, fights, etc. 
You need to have exclusive time with your oldest, nothing is better than 90 minutes later to bed than younger sibling. 

Looking at the other forums - AdoptionLink & Adoption UK - there are still loads of people waiting for matches and very very few single children. Another issue you may have is the age gap between the kids as I know my LA is still after a 3-year gap between children; this doesn't help as this then puts you into the most competitive group wanting a lo aged 0-3. Anyhow you know all this - if I were you I'd wait until your lo is a but older and hopefully for you the situation will have improved.
Good luck with it all :-)

We had a meeting with our SW yesterday and she was saying that our agency aren't recruiting anymore adopters at the moment as they have 18 potential adopters and only 3 children which they can't be matched with due to ethnicity! She also said that now is more difficult to adopt than this time last year due to lack of children. In the area most children who don't go back to birth parents are under a special guardianship order and either stay within birth family or are cared for by friends of birth family so parents will still maintain PR! They are hoping it will change but who knows. Hopefully the situation will improve over the coming months and years for prospective adopters.

I am sure I 'missed' something, what has happened with a ruling? 

I think the uk is the only eu country where stranger adoption for looked after children is possible. The rest of the Eu it is long term foster care or special guardian orders and variations from this order, not adoption. Maybe they move slowly to the eu model?

I was talking to one of our Adoption SWs a few weeks ago, who confirmed that there are very few children available for Adoption, as the majority are all being pushed into some form of kinship care.

As a FC I find this very difficult to manage, especially as the Family Support SWs, who are the ones who work with the LACs and their families, have little experience or understanding of 'best practice' for introductions

Of course, we also have to see 'our' LOs moving back into the family that they came from, where even though the new carer 'promises' that they will keep them safe from the parent/s, it often isn't possible to do so.

We have met with the SW. Even though we are prepared to take on a 4 or 5 year old that is still not enough eligible criteria for the agency (an LA in consortium agreement) we wanted to go through (the ones we got Incy from). She confirmed that statistically there are 4 adopters for every child in the system, the number of placement orders has fallen by 40% but the number of approved adopters has risen 1%. She said there really are just next to no children in the system unless you can take a sibling group, ethnic minority group or a child with "serious issues" and since we have Incy to consider none of those catagories would apply to our situation. There are therefore no children who they could place with us and so have refused to give us a 2nd assessment. We were told it was OK to contact them in a year (6 months they said was too soon) just to see if the situation has changed any. She said kinship care is the big thing followed by more children than ever going back to birth family hence why they are not coming up for adoption.

We always wanted a sibling group too.  So much so that in 2006 when we originally applied to become adopters we were told by the same LA that we eventually got Incy through that we needed a 3 bedroom house in order to be eligible for a sibling group.  We therefore sold up, moved, spent the next 6 years trying the get the new house with a considerably increased mortgage into a condition that they would accept as "good enough" to have a child in.  We did all of that only to find that when we eventually applied again (6 years after the first time) we were told by the same agency that whilst we now met the bedroom criteria we STILL could not have a sibling group due to "lack of childcare experience". 

We had "lack of childcare experience" the 6 years back, they could have told us that then in which case we would have applied to adopt a single child way back then and in 2012 when we started for Incy he could have been our 2nd single child adoption.  We would have had our family "complete" by now had it not been for their misdirection and obstructiveness.  We would have just "missed" this current "kinship care is Lord of all" situation prospective adopters now find themselves in.

I have approached a different LA today one that is not in the consortium of the LA we used for Incy just incase their children situation is different. They are going to speak to our SW at our existing LA to confirm the conversation we have had with her and if that all checks out (hopefully she has not "other reason" that she has not disclosed to us) we might be allowed to apply to this other LA and their manager will then consider if we have any chance at being assessed as 2nd time adopters with them. Our SW is not available until mid-next week now so they will not be able to speak to her about it for a little while.

We had prophecy nearly 20 years ago now that "there is a boy and a girl in it as a sign of your healing" and so we are holding firmly onto that.........we have the boy we are waiting to see if He brings forth the girl.

Went to a workshop last night, to discover being given by a sw, dh & I knew from our first approached adoption agency, which we ended up not going with as they had very few children to place - this was 1990 - 96!  Agency has since closed and SW is now independent and works for herself.  

Spoke with her asking about adoption today, which was quite an eye opener, she mentioned a court case which is probably the one you have quoted  Toko ?   and how it has changed adoption for the worse.  She said there are about 100 families going after each child, as few children are coming through the adoption process now.  They are being placed with extended family etc.  She said it is very competitive X Factor style where SW feel they have to push / gazump to get their adopters to get them noticed by SW who have the children available for adoption     

She felt it will all come back to bite us in a few years when the pendulum swings back the other way and these children who should have been placed up for adoption will be suffering from being left in birth extended families.



 

I am coming to suspect that Sqk maybe an only child. Not what I want but DH is still unsure about adopting again and with the current climate it would be difficult. However given we need an age gap of at least 3 years and given I would go for approval for 0-4/5 this time round I suppose I do have another 3-4 years to consider things as Sqk is 4 currently. So landscape could change again - it si annoying we were not allowed to go for sibling group ourselves but that was down to my health issues mainly.