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Can I ask what makes you come to adoption to extend your family?

Hi its something we have thought about for few years. My husband is adopted and I work in Paediatrics and understand the vast need for adoption. just want to give a little one a chance if a better life and would love 3 children.

Lots of posts worth reading through on the families with birth children forum. Just one to start: https://www.adoptionuk.org/forum-topic/thinking-adoption You say you know the risks - f2a or adoption in general?

Lots of posts on here from adopters with BC who are many years down the line. If you page back you'll find answers there. I think a common theme and one that I would echo, is wait till your youngest is at least school age. Bigger gaps generally work better in adoption because adopted kids generally have greater and additional needs compared to BC. With regard to F2A - we didn't do that but ultimately we are FC who adopted our foster child. We started fostering babies when our birth kids were 4, almost 9 and almost 13. We fostered a few little ones from a week old to 2 years old over a few years. Our AS came to us at almost 5 weeks old. Circumstances meant that he was still with us 18 months later and open to adoption. We were very much our LAs preferred adoption option but did take several months of saying no before we eventually said yes as he turned 2. He's now almost 13. Fostering babies can feel quite limiting with kids, contact with babies tends to be frequent, sometimes even with F2A babes. Court and solicitors have to be happy if you're taking a holiday that contact be suspended for 2 weeks. Days out in school holidays have to fit around contact schedules. At least with F2A you would usually have social care staff doing the transporting; its a double edged sword. You end up with literally a dozen workers picking the baby up and droppinv the baby off. Frequent contact long term can, IMHO, be incredibly damaging to babies emotionally; its just not normal for a small baby to be taken away from your primary caregiver to a strange location and be passed among relative strangers. You also need to be mindful that you will accept an F2A placement with minimal information. You really will be taking a punt in the dark about what the genetic and pre-birth history of the baby is. You will get information of course, but more will filter through over time. You may find you unwittingly import a variety of likely health or development issues into you family which may impact significantly on your birth children (another really valid argument for waiting till your youngest is school age). Id strongly advise that you talk to adopters whose kids are teens plus rather than lots of new adopters in the first couple of years with pre-schoolers; many issues only become clear at school age when toddler-like behaviour doesnt fade away and socially and emotionally adopted kids seem to be stuck at the pre-school stage. Have a read of the old posts, there's a lot in there.

thankyou this has been very informative and lots to think about. much appreciated

There are lots of uncertainties with F2A and you don't always receive as much info about the child as you would if you were adopting. You are also stuck in a strange no mans land in that you are not yet the adopted parent (and therefore don't always get info that you would expect if you were purely adopting) snd yet you are more than a foster carer too. Strictly speaking you are not mummy and your children won't be the baby's big brother or sister. I have an AD and we are currently doing F2A and so I am very careful about the language I use. We are 'looking after baby for a while' and my AD is the big girl not sister. I don't know whether it might be harder for birth children to grasp this uncertain concept but I am sure you would work with your SW to get the explanation pitched right. Children enter F2A in a number of ways and I would suggest you find out as much as possible on a specific child to determine whether the risk of going to other birth family is a risk worth taking. The positives for me have been the wonders of looking after a baby (didn't realise how lovely babies are!) and knowing that this LO won't face the huge challenges that my AD will face in her life due to the early years of neglect she suffered. I wish you well x

Thanks that's great. Just gathering info at this stage and all these comments and signposting have been very helpful xx

We did fta with a birth child and 2 already adopted. Our oldest (bs) was 6 at the time. Very positive outcome in that he has been with us since so young and we can definetly notice the difference in his attachment to us compared to the 2 middle ones who were both closer to a year each when they came to us. As someone already said you need to be careful about language because there is no certainty with fta - birth son did find this hard and worried quite a bit about it. When it came to it and the decision was made that he was staying there were actually a lot of tears as he was worried about how the birth mother was going to cope losing her baby. He was of course happy that he was staying with us but in his eyes he loved his little brother and couldn’t get past the fact that our gain was her loss. The 2 middle ones didn’t really get that it wasn’t a permanent arrangement from the beginning so easier for them but they would have been devastated if he hadn’t stayed. We did have quite a lot of contact which was hard. Emotionally very draining and hard to be handing over my little baby to see his birth mother and then get comments back daily about how I wasn’t looking after him properly in the contact book. I don’t regret it for one minute though and was fantastic for us.

In 2010, with a 10 year old birth daughter, we adopted a 4 year old girl. Prior to this, She was taken into care at 18 months due to a highly chaotic family background, and fostered with just one family until coming to us. She was never rejected by her birth parents, but removed due to their struggles to be responsible for children. She has 1 sibling and 5 half siblings - the latter each with a different father. Almost 8 years down the line and to be frank it has been a disaster. Our adopted daughter has been jealous of her older sister since the start and has never been able to deal with the fact that her big sister lives with her birth parents whilst she is an 'outsider'. Despite every re-assurance, she has never felt part of the family and persistently steals from other family members, lies for weeks on end about it and flies into long, violent rages when found out. At first she would steal things that perhaps made her feel closer to mum or her sister - e.g. mums' perfumes, make up and bath products or her sister's drawing materials, cosmetics and clothes. However she has moved on to stealing cash and food on a regular basis from anywhere. She has even taken car keys and thrown them in the outside bin, and then watched whist we turn the house upside down looking for them. They cost hundreds of pounds to replace but she shrugs her shoulders. She sometimes shows remorse for stealing, promises to change, and then repeats the behaviour within a few days. Generally, the more it hurts us the more satisfaction she seems to feel. In truth, she has a misdirected hatred towards us for adopting her and this is hugely exacerbated by the fact that her sister is a birth child in the family. Initially we asked for professional help but ended up with several short term assessments which went nowhere due to lack of funding. More recently we have had much better support with regular ongoing psychotherapy as the post adoption support services have been able to allocate budgets according to what they feel the need is rather than re-applying to government departments every 6 weeks . However, it feels like her problems are now deeply ingrained and as she get older she knows how to 'play the game'. The violence is getting worse as she gets older and our family would be falling apart if we weren't as strong and open as we are. Sorry this is such a negative post but we are good, intelligent, caring people whose lives have been largely ruined by trying to help. As a result, despite our many best efforts, we are clearly not able to help our adopted daughter. We also know that there were concerns about our daughters issues before we adopted but they were hushed up - with foster parents in particular not being permitted to pass on their observations. A sad situation and one that compels me to advise caution when bringing an adopted child into a family with birth children.

thankyou for both your stories... very helpful. it seems that the foster to adopt from birth or very young seems to be the best outcome for all involved. lots of food for thought. thanks x

We had a similar story to littlepeople. In 1987 we were foster parents originally with an older birth child and I became pregnant with my second child as social services moved our foster daughter to a "forever home" which subsequently broke down and she was placed back in foster care with a different family (as I was heavily pregnant by this time). We fought to adopt her as we could see this could become a perpetual cycle in and out of care and foster homes through her young life. As the years progressed we had the same issues stealing, lying she showed no remorse and it felt that she just resented us for adopting her it became so bad that we threw her out at 16 years old (we were all suffering due to her behaviours) and it couldn't go on any longer. Despite approaching social services on numerous occasions no support was ever really given, they also did not tell us about attachment disorders and I only found out about this years later when I completed a counselling diploma and carried out my own research. Needless to say my daughter is now 30 years old. In her late teens and early twenties she led a chaotic lifestyle leading to crime. when she was 22 she came back to live with us after being in a very abusive relationship. This was the start of the turning point and she needed much reassurance and to this day still has her control issues but she has been in a relationship for the past 7 years and is now very thoughtful. It has been a long journey for us and we still have to deal with insecurity and constantly reassure her. I hope things have changed for others over the years. It would be interesting to know if this is the case or not.