all about adoption
Every year, there are vulnerable children needing a stable, caring home through adoption. Some wait longer than others. We want to help change that. Could you?
Every year, there are vulnerable children needing a stable, caring home through adoption. Some wait longer than others. We want to help change that. Could you?
Could you open your home and heart to one of the 2,700 children waiting for a family?
Our aim is to find families for children of all ages who, for a variety of reasons, are no longer able to live with their birth families. Working in partnership with local authority adoption teams across the whole of the UK, we have helped thousands of adopters and children find their forever family. We believe ALL children deserve the chance of a loving, permanent home through adoption wherever possible. Many children wait longer for a family if they are over 4 years old, from a Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic (BAME) background or have complex needs. Adoption Matters has a successful track record in placing children from a range of backgrounds and the expert ongoing support and training we offer, means our adopters are fully supported.We are looking for people from all kinds of backgrounds, cultures and beliefs who can adopt one or more children and give them something many of us take for granted – security, stability, love and the opportunity to thrive. To adopt with Adoption Matters you can be married, single, divorced, living together or widowed. What you do need is the willingness and commitment to offer a child or children a loving, caring home in which they can thrive.
You don’t need…
You do need…
We have detailed below our adoption process which is covered in two stages. The adoption journey starts when you first consider adoption and if it is right for you and your family.
We work closely with local authority adoption services across the country to find the right match for children, some of which are featured on here our website. There are currently over 2,700 children waiting for adoption, watch these pages for updates on children we are family finding for through our Bespoke Family Finding Service.
This service is for babies and young children who are enter care and are likely to need adoption, but who also still have a chance of being reunited with their birth family. Carers will initially perform the role of foster carer while the courts decide whether or not a child can return to its birth family. During this time the child will need to see their birth family regularly and carers will need to support the birth family’s efforts to regain the care for their child.
If the courts decide it is in the child’s best interests to return home to birth family, the child will be returned to their care. Concurrent carers will have the satisfaction of knowing that they have given the child the best possible start in life by providing care and security from the earliest time in their life and will play at part in helping them settle back into their family.
However, if the courts decide that it is not in the child’s best interests to return home to birth family, the child will remain with their concurrent carer/s and be adopted by them. This route to adoption enables a child placed for adoption via Concurrent Planning to have very few moves when they enter care and helps form vital attachments in the earliest stages in a child’s life.
Our Fostering and Adoption (Concurrent Planning) service covers the whole of the North West including; Lancashire, Greater Manchester; Cheshire; Wirral and Merseyside areas.
For a free no obligation information pack on the Concurrent Planning Service and how you can become a concurrent carer Contact us now
Fostering for Adoption places a child or children with approved adopters who are also approved as foster carers (sometimes known as dual approved carers). During the fostering stage of the placement the courts are deciding what is in the child’s best interests but the local council have already decided that adoption is the right plan. If the courts decide that adoption is in the child’s best interests, the child then stays with their current fostering for adoption carer who then go on to adopt the child.
What is the difference between Fostering for Adoption and Concurrent Planning?
We also offer a concurrent planning service for young children who are likely to need adoption but whom still have a chance of being reunited with birth family.
The main difference between the two is that in Concurrent Planning neither the court nor the local council have yet decided what the best plan for the child is, whereas in Fostering for Adoption the local council has decided that the right plan for the child is adoption, but the court is still yet to decide. As they are very similar, deciding between Concurrent Planning and Fostering for Adoption can be difficult, but we are here to help you understand both options and will explain both to you in full during our home visit to you. For many adopters, neither are the right choice and the traditional adoption route is preferred but we want to give you all options.
Why choose Fostering for Adoption?
Fostering for Adoption does have risks and you will need to work with the uncertainty of a child returning home. Although this is the exception, carers have told us that although it is painful when a child returns home, they have the satisfaction of knowing that they have given a child love and security when they most needed it and helped a family to be reunited.
You will be trained on working with birth parents, facilitating contact, understanding and dealing with uncertainly and prepared for the possibility of a child returning home. Most children placed for Fostering for Adoption are very young, often infants. Carers who go on to adopt get to know and love their children from a very young age and help them through the time in their life when they are most vulnerable. You will also get to know the parents of the child through contact which can form the basis for meaningful contact in the future and be an important source of information for the child in later life.
If you decide to become a Fostering for Adoption carer with Adoption Matters, you will remain as an approved adopter with us and the local council who places the child will approve you as a foster carer for them for the period of time until you formally become the child’s adopter, or as above, the child returns home to birth family. The local council will usually pay you a fostering allowance for the period of time you are a foster carer (typically around 3-6 months) but in keeping with other adopters, you are not usually paid an allowance to adopt the child.
If you think that Fostering for Adoption may be for you, then please get in touch as we are actively recruiting Fostering for Adoption carers now.
To view our adopter videos visit our video section here. Our adopters below have shared their real stories about their own personal adoption journey. Click the below links to read more.
If you are interested in Inter-Country Adoption, please contact our colleagues at the Intercountry Adoption Centre on their Advice Line: 0208 447 4753
The Advice Line is open to members of the general public wherever they live if their enquiry is about intercountry adoption. The Advice Line is open every weekday from 10.00 a.m to 1.00 p.m. with call backs made by Advisors up until 4.00 p.m. You can also visit their website at: http://www.icacentre.org.uk/
We welcome families from all communities, married, single, LGBTQ, divorced, people with disabilities, working, unemployed or retired and from any ethnic or religious background or people who have no religious beliefs.
Due to our history and strong links with church communities, we approve many families of faith. Adoption Matters also have a long history of working with families from the Christian community and have partnered with Home for Good to encourage more Christian families and those who attend church to think about growing their family through adoption.
Home for Good is a charity we work in partnership with, who exist to find a home for every child that needs one. They, and we, believe that the Church is ideally placed to help find homes for children and provide the support to those families who do. In 2015, we worked with Home for Good and other independent adoption agencies across the country to create the Home for Good pathway to adoption. Recommended by Home for Good and rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted, Adoption Matters are committed to providing a faith-friendly service and offer ongoing adoption support – for life.
Some of our families of faith have shared their journeys through blogs, take a look: Rain or Shine & A bun from another oven
We offer our main adoption services to an area across the whole of the North of England, North Wales, Stoke, Stafford and Shropshire. Our contact us page has a handy map for you to enter your postcode to see if we cover your area.
Our Concurrent Planning Service covers the whole of the North West.
We deal with each enquiry individually and if you live outside of any of these areas we may be able to assist you if you are interested in a specific child, sibling groups or children with complex needs.
General Enquiry Form / Informal Discussion.
We know you have a choice and we are delighted that you are now visiting our website. We would advise you to complete our online enquiry form which will enable you to download our adoption information guide. In the guide, you will receive our ‘general enquiry form’. If you are interested in proceeding, please complete this form and send back to us either by email or post.
On receipt of your form, we will contact you to arrange a planned telephone call for an informal discussion about your interest. We will aim to make this telephone call within 10 working days of receipt of your enquiry form.
We may visit you at home if agreed for an ‘informal visit’. This visit will be carried out by an experienced social worker. This is an opportunity for us to go through your queries together and to look at your individual circumstances.
We understand that you maybe anxious about this visit, please don’t be. It’s called ‘informal’ for a good reason. We will discuss checks, recruitment criteria and the needs of the children we are currently finding families for at this visit.
Registration of Interest, this is the start of Stage 1 of the adoption process.
Following the home visit if you, and we agree, we will then ask you to complete a more detailed form called a ‘registration of interest’. This provides the information we need to begin to take up the checks required, medicals, police, reference etc.
We will allocate you a social worker who will guide you through every step of the process from then on. This is also the start of the Stage 1 Process of adoption which we will take at your pace, but we aim to complete within 2 months.
Adoption Preparation Training Groups
You will be invited to attend our Adoption Preparation Training Groups. These are training courses held for all prospective adopters held frequently across the regions we cover. Our courses are held during the day over 4 short days, 10am to 4pm including refreshment and lunch breaks.
The courses will give you an overview about the adoption process. Again, please try not to be too nervous, we know how daunting these course are for our prospective adopters. You will need to complete the course before proceeding with your journey and like a lot of other steps in the adoption journey, it is a statutory requirement for you to attend and complete the course.
Formal Application and the start of the assessment Stage 2 of the process
After successful completion of the preparation training groups and once all the checks and references are satisfactorily completed, a shared decision is made between you and the agency to make your formal application to adopt. This starts Stage 2 of the adoption process and your assessment will begin. We take Stage 2 of the process at your pace, but we will aim to complete it within 4 months. If we have any issues to raise before Stage 2, we will discuss these with you.
The Stage 2 assessment involves regular meetings with your social worker so they can complete their report – called a Prospective Adopters Report or PAR for short. You will need to be available for these meetings. It is important to note that at any time during the assessment you, or we, may decide that adoption is not right for you. This could be due to something that arises in the assessment process, for example, changing life circumstances or other concerns that arise that lead you, or us, to decide that now isn’t the right time.
Adoption Panel
All reports are submitted to an independent adoption panel who will consider all the information provided and make a recommendation about whether you are suitable to adopt.
Again, if we have any issues to raise, we will arrange to discuss these with you, prior to your attendance.
The panel will make a recommendation to the agency based on the social workers assessment (PAR) to approve you or not as suitable to adopt. This completes stage 2 of the adoption process and you can now celebrate! The timescale for completion of Stage 2 – we take this at your pace, but aim to complete it in 4 months.
In the event you do not agree with the Agency Decision, you have the right to appeal to the agency or alternatively the Independent Review Mechanism, we will give you full details of the appeals procedure before panel.
Now you are an approved adopter we will work hard to start looking for a child or children whose needs we believe you can best meet. This is where our expertise really shines. We have extensive experience of family finding and ensuring we find the right family for the right child.
As we work with local authority adoption services across the whole of the UK, we have a greater ‘pool’ of children to look at. You will receive regular communication from your social worker throughout this process and we will advise and guide you on the best way to assist the process.
When a ‘match’ to a child is found, we will work closely with you and the child’s local authority adoption service, in putting together plans for meetings, introductions and support. We will do our utmost to obtain full and accurate information about the child/ren you are being matched with or are considering. We will guide you through discussions regarding the children who will eventually join your family and support you through introductions to them.
We will then remain in close contact to help you with advice and guidance regarding any particular issues that you encounter caring for the child/ren, especially in those early weeks and months. Once a child has moved in with you, you will apply for an adoption order from court and once granted, you will then become their legal parent/s.
As part of the matching process, ongoing support will be discussed and agreed. Prospective adopters tell us that one of the main reasons they chose our agency was due to our clear commitment to the support of our adopters and our strong reputation for this service. Support is offered through all stages of the process from enquiry, to your registration as adopters through to placement and if you wish, even in the years ahead after an Adoption Order has been made.
We also work closely with local authorities in assisting applications to the Adoption Support Fund on families behalf. Our Centre for Adoption Support has offers a wealth of support including therapeutic & attachment training, training for schools, adopter support groups and activity days for the whole family. www.centreforadoptionsupport.org
Simply fill in the below form to receive a no obligation information pack. This is the next step towards finding out if adoption is right for you and your family. If you supply your email address, we will email a pack to you.