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Hello againI don't think auk membership is too muchThey give me that magazine (this months was a cracker) and they allowed me to have a way to meet other adoptersAnd learn so very muchJust wondering if we could possibly speed the improvements up

It will be one subscription too much for me. Already having to cut back with a lot of things and certainly won't be paying out each year to come in on a private board. So when this comes in it will be bye bye from me.

Our LA has paid for our first years membership to auk, and I find the magazines interesting and the boards have been very helpful, but I couldn't justify £62 especially while I am on adoption leave from work, I also hope that as time goes by, my need for advice from the boards shouldn't be too often (fingers crossed, well everything crossed) .I am not in touch with any local fellow adopters (something I need to look into) so just browsing through these boards have made me feel like I am not going mad on a few occasions!!Has auk ever asked the boards ,how many users would stop using the boards if they had to pay the full membership.Just as an afterthought, can the adoption uk magazines be purchased from auk? Is there an option to pay monthly to be a member?

Adoption UK membership starts from just £45 a year if you pay by direct debit.We have a low income rate or you can ask your local authority to fund your membership as part of the support services they offer you.Membership to Adoption UK offers many benefits (http://bit.ly/17hgPdu) including, as Pear Tree says, the fantastic Adoption Today magazine which features all the latest adoption news, information and research alongside articles from adoptive parents and adoption-related experts such as Dan Hughes (new article coming in June issue).Adoption UK membership is open to anyone parenting children who have had a difficult start in life, this includes adoptive parents, prospective adopters, foster carers, kinship carers and special guardians amongst others.

I feel I should clarify. I do think AUK offers a lot for the membership fee - but none of what is offered has been very useful to me in all the years. The magazine was interesting sometimes, but only a fraction of it each month - for me, personally. A lot of it I knew for elsewhere (I research a lot and read a lot...)I'm not on a low income, as defined by AUK, and my LA only funds membership for the first year after placement. So I'd be paying the higher price - which is a lot more than I, personally, am prepared to pay as it is, essentially, dead money - I have never benefited from the cost in a significant way.I am not saying I think the cost is excessive - it's actually quite reasonable, when spread over 12 months. But I have other things that are of a higher priority to pay for first.I may decide to join again to access the private boards, we'll see. I do doubt it though - I have other places I can go and chat. And people I can talk to when I need detailed advice. I will join it I risk being cut off from good friends here - but I use PM to chat to them anyway, and I assume all people using the updated boards will still be able to send and receive PMs.AUK offers a good service, and is good value, if you need what is offered. But, for me, the cost is currently too high for the personal benefit I would gain.

AUK may say that membership is open to all who care for children, other than birth parente, but as an experienced FC, I will not be paying membership fees just for the pleaseure of using these boards. I like to think that I 'give' far more than I 'receive' from the boards, and I have no intention of paying for that. Sorry folks, but I think that you will lose a great deal of good advice from like minded carers and adopters.

Imp I think you and other FC's and non members, like myself, will still be able to access the parts of the boards that aren't Members Only, but if there aren't many of these areas left, then I agree there wouldn't be much point in coming on here as all the talk would be happening on the private members only parts of the boards. Newcomers will be left very much to themselves then and will probably leave if there isn't much discussion or anything happening on the boards. Will be interesting to see how it is going to work.

I'm a fully (self-funded) paid up member, and value these boards. I don't care whether or not those on the boards are members or not. What does matter is that there is regular traffic on them, to make them read, and to enable a reasonable level of responses to posts made.AUK needs to think very carefully about the balance between offering private boards - which some people apparently desperately want - and offering a vibrant community of those interested in adoption-related issues, which many people want and need. It's not, hopefully, an either or situation.I hope that further rigorous research / a simple poll is done of what users of the message boards want (members and non members alike) before possibly risking severely limiting the effectiveness of these boards. Eligibility to post, simply through having paid up £45 per year, doesn't mean that you've necessarily got the extensive experience and useful, supportive let alone the interest and time to post and read these boards regularly.If charging for use of many (most????) of the message boards is seen as a means of income generation for AUK, then we have to stop and remember that the posts on here are given freely, and the only criteria should be an interest / passion / need to find out as much as possible about issues related to adopted kids.And, please, please do not do anything to limit the archive accessiblity of what has already been written on these boards. The search facility currently works really well (apart from the current difficulties in accessing p.2 etc if you find more than one page of results). Other useful organisations have sadly cut off access to their message boards when updating them, which is a scandalous waste of all that expertise. Don't be lead down this path, AUK!Blueberry2

Hear hear Blueberry - "One" paid up members only chat board is all that members asked for.

Let's hope that AUK now decides that it doesn't like the taste of it's own feet, nor indeed, the bullet hole.On the other hand, is this board really the only sensible forum? I only come here, but that's probably habit ..?

Maybe AUK could cut costs and reduce the membership fee by publishing the magazine online. Mine lies for ages before I get round to reading as I find although they can be interesting very few of the articles are relevant to me.It would be a shame if we lost the help and support of many on here because too many of the boards are made private.Nixie

AUK:Could there be a special rate for those who only wish to have access to the private board and not the magazine, training or anything else?I am no longer able to work (due to adoption related illness) so do not receive any income. I have over the years been just like Suffolk Puff, unable to post what's been happening because it's an open forum.Over the years I have given of myself as much as I possibly can to help others. Sometimes people say thank you; other times I find I've been talking to myself.....But because I could do with letting it all hang out myself, I am totally restricted. Because I can't do it on here.

I agree with Shadow too.Only ever asked for a private area where very sensitive things could be discussed with people who understand (hopefully).AUK should remember that so many of us give our time and care totally free of charge to answer and help people.And now we are told that the boards have broken now and cannot be fixed until at least Autumn. Many of us have been banging on about these ancient boards for a number of years, yet still nothing has been done about them until now they are beyond repair.Shame on you, AUK. I'm really cross.

I agree with you Madrid. The reason I answer so many posts is because often I see that a newcomer has asked a question and if they were to wait until Auk answered, they could wait for days. It's the users who give the support on here, whether they are paid up members or not, not the Auk staff.

These boards have been invaluable to me since DH and I started our adoption journey. The time from prep classes to linking then intros can be over a year easily and these boards help give us new prospective adopters a deeper insight into what we are about to do while we prepare. To those of you who give your time to offer advice and support you really should be honoured with a medal (if you haven't been already). If the Govt want to encourage more adopters and offer support to them then these boards must stay free. Perhaps they could be moved over to the new First4Adoption website.

I think it is great having private boards, I would have no problem paying 10 pounds a year to join. In my opinion everyone with more than 500 posts should be able to join the private section. By than you sort of 'know' the person joining the private boards.Paying full membership while I not even live in the uk is useless for me. I have however adopted an uk child.

I can understand why AUK are using membership as access to the private boards - after all, it's a reasonable way of determining those that genuinely need to access the board and those that just want to cause trouble (or whatever).And I don't mind paying a fee to access private areas, if this means they are kept private from the trolls - but echo the request for a membership of the boards only, without full membership to everything else (which I really don't want, or need).That said, other places I post on have private areas that remain very private and confidential - without charging. They go by post number and reputation, or by asking questions of newcomers and 'vetting' them thoroughly. This does take some time and effort though.As to how the boards survive without charging the members - by allowing advertising. I know lots of people hate ads, but they do bring in a lot of income (they pay server bills every month!), and can easily be ignored. I don't even notice ads on most places I visit...

You'll have a long wait Shadow. Auk don't care about what we want, they just do whatever they see as being best. All we ever asked for was "one" private board and now they are going to make practically all of it private. Wonder what Philly Morall would thik of this?

Philly and all other founding members would be very very unimpressed I a sure.So, AUK ???? A response to the users from here (you are quick to advertise these boards as a source of support for adopters- especially when the) helpline is closed).Just to be clear - Ithink I am right in saying that users of these boards ae prepard to become paid up members for the use of A (that mean 1 - just one- private board).Jellies

One day you wake up and think: Let's have a look how everyone is doing. You sign in and see the message 'sorry you do not have permission to enter this forum'. You look at the one and only open boards where only a few messages are posted by most users you have never seen the name of. Than you spot a familiair name, 'hey' you think maybe it will all be as when the message boards were accesable for everyone.But you soon realise a few weeks later that this one open board is slow, nothing interesting going on. By than you have no idea what happens after the £45 a year wall. Have most of the 'familiair faces' left? Are there now mostly prospective adopters and adopters with newly placed children who post simply because they get a years membership for free.Financially it is not easy, as a single adopter I do not have £45 laying around to spend on a messageboard.I have been a member in the past but never benefitted of the activities aduk organises, they were not in my area.The best thing was probably a weekend with GSH as I met another adopter I am still in contact with. But that is not an aduk event.After been on the boards for such long time that it was possible to read anyones post back to the moment the boards started I feel a bit sad about it. (years ago I deleted my posts but kept the same username because of the situation at the time).I was always of the opinion that we need private boards, the issues which are playing around adopted children are simply often too sensitive to post for the world to read.I often though it would be nice to share X or Y, but I did not do so as it would be easy to be recognised by members of the birth family. Well I still hang around a bit, again if the membership for the boards is £10, I do not mind supporting adoption uk as organisation. And I can see how that keeps 'less interested individuals' out.I think adoption uk has to realise also that the messageboards are there because of us posters. But I am sure adoption uk thinks; well just give it some time and the boards will be active again. Maybe, maybe not. As everyone know as soon as children arrive your spending budget is somehow less, .Will people still be members after the first free year? After you no longer are interested in adopting another child? long after the children struggled through school, the moment they move out, the moment they enter university, mental hospital, marriage, jail, work experience, etc.I have the feeling those adopters do not pay £45 to share their experience.Maybe adopton uk can pay me to share my ideas? £45 a year, I have a lot to say!