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Dropping back into this thread to see if anything has changed.

We have found more profiles coming through and interest shown in our profile.

Sadly, one that showed interest in us where the Foster Carer was fostering to adopt! We only found this out after reading a candid remark by one of the medical professionals in the CPR. Once we raised this question, we were greeted with radio silence and then dropped. We still believe that we were used to make their application look "fair and transparent".

Another recent rejection came after being told that our TP parenting style wouldn't suit the children, and they needed traditional/Therapeutic hybrid parenting. Even though we are told consistently via every adoption outlet that Therapeutic parenting is the fundamental baseline for helping adopted children recover and develop. Like most adopters, being in our 40s we had a masterclass in being raised on traditional parenting, so 99% of us will have a vocation for that!!! But as previously stated, TP is a proven method and is at the forefront of everything adoption related.

Other than witnessing the disappointment and emotional investment from our Social Worker, there is literally nothing to support parents who are strung along and rejected for reasons that don't add up.

All this does is put off prospective adopters from carrying on with this process and we can see why several of our original group have given up the search.

We will carry on regardless and will not allow ourselves to be beaten down emotionally or have our ability to provide a loving and caring home undermined.

Paradoxically, we are told we are not capable enough to adopt children that present with few issues, yet we are told we are more than capable of adopting children with copious additional needs, that would overstretch our support network.

The only small consolation to this is that when talking to other waiting parents in our social and support network, they are experiencing exactly the same issues.

We don't expect anything to come from this post, but if you are reading it and experiencing the same issues, know that you are not alone in this.

Is it because of the fee that has to be paid when an authority places a child out of their own local authority area? Is this why charities and voluntary agencies are struggling, because in reality authorities will only place with their own adopters, and seem to actually only reply to their own adopters? There can be any number of reasons given but if the priority really was children's needs (and like us we were willing to look at direct contact if needed including out of our area), this would look different. Am I wrong in also just saying there is both a lack of courtesy in not replying, and also a system issue on Linkmaker that it lets social workers just do a drop down and not actually give a courteous reply?