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Hi, I'm new here and my husband and I are thinking about adoption but we are a little worried about our suitability to adopt, I've read a lot of the information available on a few adoption sites, I think we tick most/every box so to speak but there are some things not covered that I wondered about (and hoped people could advise) before we proceed any further. I am 31 years old, mixed race (black father, white mother) and my husband is 36 and white, we have been married for almost 10 years, we have a 9 year old daughter who is on the autistic spectrum (specifically asperger syndrome). I also have asperger syndrome and my husband has been diagnosed/re-diagnosed with a variety of things ranging from general depression, to bi-polar disorder to personality disorder (they can never quite place his condition). The specialists at the charity who diagnosed our daughter are almost certain he has asperger syndrome too rather then any of the other conditions he has been diagnosed with, but he has no desire to be diagnosed, he accepts who he is, he feels no need for a formal label. He is on medication; sertraline for anxiety and lamotrigine for the bi-polar moods, even though his diagnosis changed he remains on the medication as it has helped significantly with balancing out his low moods (prior to meds he could be depressed for weeks, now it's a few hours / the odd day now and again). The other thing about my husband is that he has a criminal conviction, as most teenagers do he went through a rebellious phase, he ended up with the wrong crowd and was drinking and smoking weed and one day when he was 18 he was stopped by the police searched and they found a pocket knife (his friend had asked him that evening to look after it) and a substantial amount of weed which they did not believe was for his own personal use, as a result he was tried and given community service. He stopped the drugs/drinking and hasn't touched anything since, it was just a stupid thing he did as a teen. Neither of us smoke or drink (at all) we have no desire to, we are very much homebodies as well, preferring to stay in and play games with our little girl then going out somewhere. Although her dance classes mean we do have to go out quite a lot and she acts/has an agent so we make trips to film/take her to auditions. The reason we have come to adoption as the solution to expanding our family is due to a number of reasons. Before having kids we always talked about adoption and that should we have any issues conceiving we would not go for fertility treatment but straight to adoption. Our daughter's birth was quite traumatic and so we decided back then if we wanted more we would adopt. As our daughter grew older we were 50/50 with adopting or having another naturally. We decided to go natural and after years of no success (when our daughter was conceived first try) after a few tests I found out I have Polycystic ovary syndrome and have been on the medication Metformin for almost 2 years now again without any success. Our daughter is an aspiring actress and played the role of a foster child in our local authority's new fostering campaign advert which again brought the idea of adoption up. We are now faced with 2 options we could continue with more tests and maybe fertility treatments or adoption and we both feel giving a child who needs it a loving home is the preferable option, the desire for another child for both of us is not dependant on it being biologically related to us. We are both in agreement that we would be willing to adopt a child from any ethnic background and one with asperger syndrome would also fit into our lives due to us already having a child on the spectrum. We feel we would make very good adoptive parents, neither of us work at the moment due to our conditions but we keep busy with voluntary jobs. For example my husband teaches aikido (martial art) to both adults and children 3 times a week, he has in the past also taught it at our daughter's school, he has spent a year reading with the children in school and attends all school trips chaperoning a group of children. I have in the past been on our local playgroup's committee helping them fundraise, I currently help out as much as possible at my daughter's dance school and also regularly take uni courses ranging from psychology and web design through to photography. I've read about the difference in parenting an adopted child versus a birth child and again I feel we are able to do this due to already parenting our daughter differently due to her ASD. We have never had need to use a naughty step or reward charts etc, we have always used positive re-enforcement and choice with her behaviour, making it clear to her what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. We may just be lucky and have a very well behaved child anyway but she is never badly behaved (occasionally cheeky as all kids are) but everyone always comments on how well behaved she is. We are also use to advocating for our daughter, we have had some struggles with getting her assessed properly but we never gave up and eventually she was diagnosed and with the right support in place at school she has virtually no problems (still a little behind in maths but she is catching up). She's also had medical issues in the past that have been very hard to cope with but we worked through it and were actually commended by her paediatrician on how quickly she recovered. She had a chronic bowel condition and was on quite strong medication to try and keep her regular but it was a never ending cycle of her holding on because it hurt and it hurting because she held on so long but as I said rather then it taking years to break the cycle it took us around a year, so that by the time she started school she was almost 100% better (she had a few lapses over the years but we have kept on top of keeping her regular). Her other medical issue is with her kidneys, she has a lot of scarring on her kidneys which the urologists still don't know what caused it (they suspect it may be from when she had the bowel problems) she developed a severe phobia to the scans etc she needs to have and again it took us months of positive re-enforcement, patience and trying again and again(after CAMHS therapist said she couldn't help her, her fear was "too complex") to have the procedures done (we even shelled out for a hypnotist to try and help her) and again fingers crossed she has no more scarring and they are happy to scan her every 6 months just to check everything is okay (she also has a low dose anti biotic everyday). I'm sorry if that was rather long, I just wanted to give you as detailed info about us as possible, I just want to know if there is too much negative against us to even be considered (the mental health situation/meds/past conviction/the autism etc) or if any adopters have/are in a similar situation.