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Please keep trying - I’m sure you will find a match in the end. We adopted many years ago - also had birth children and my husband is of Asian heritage although he is from an African country. We adopted 2 toddlers - mixed heritage but not exactly the same as ours. The second one (they were full siblings but had never met) lived over 3 hours drive away. I can’t see that would be a problem unless there was an order to maintain contact - in fact in many cases it’s desirable to live a distance away. Are you looking for a very young child / baby - which might be much more in demand and therefore family finders can be choosy? Are you expressing interest in children from similar backgrounds - which we did rather than white British children? Perhaps looking at what sort of children you are able to offer a family to - with your SW - might help and also emphasising your strengths and what you as a family have to offer which is different from others (so you can tweak the profile) might help?

We have been there as well. "We are looking for a closer ethnic match" being the catch phrase of the day back then. Ironically we ended up with a transracial match. Keep at it, you will get there. Like Safia, I would look out for children who have some Polish heritage or possibly consider broadening your age range.

Or other east European or neighbouring country - ones you are familiar with - which the average person would not be - knowledge of language / food / folk lore / festivals / customs etc

It is so hard when you get that close. We were interviewed alongside someone else and rejected because our family was not as close a match to the child's foster family. After nearly 4 years we had begun to wonder if we would ever be matched. Then we were contacted about our DS. It was hard during the wait but was the right match in the end.

Safia makes a good point. Our impression certainly was that sw’s ideas about Eu cultures is quite vague and there are not many people who can offer any knowledge of certain countries/ cultures, hence our transracial match. So your Polish heritage might be the closest they can get to matching the ethnicity of a Hungarian/ Slovakian/ Slovenian/ Eastern European Roma etc. child.

I agree with the above. I think social workers do try and match the child's ethnicity with adopters. We are white british and when we went through the adoption process, many years ago, we expressed interest in two separate children who had polish backgrounds and we were turned down for both because we did not match the child's background. So I really don't think it is "nationalism" or "discrimination" - social workers want the best match possible for a child in every respect. Also your point about social workers never getting back to you is par for the course I am afraid. You also mention "the new baby" - which suggests you want a very young child and competition for this age group is very fierce. So I would consider widening your age group criteria. I would also look at local authorities who have a large proportion of EU nationals in their area and ask your social worker to send your flyer/profile to these.

best wishes xx

This is not about nationalism. Their cultural heritage might become very important to your child at some point and it makes life easier for everyone if you have similar cultural roots. I do understand your frustration though, we have been there. However, your Polish heritage will put you at the front of the queue for some children and there will be potential matches where your non-British heritage will be outweighed by other factors.

3 hours drive make a huge difference to a sw who will have to visit you on several occasions. It means they will spend the majority of several working days in transport. That is very expensive and inefficient if it can be avoided. So if there is another equally good match, they will go for that one.

Matching is a complex process and very tough on adopters. You might think you are the perfect match for a child and their sw just can't see it or choose someone else for reasons that might not convince you. It is very tough to have hardly any control over something that is so important. You just have to trust sw and their expertise. Hang in there!

Hi Change Future,

Just reading about this manager's concerns about your ability to promote this child's British heritage due to your "nationality", I could see in my mind my SW getting the big guns out, ready for action.

Firstly, deducting someone's national identity or cultural heritage from their nationality makes no sense, you might not be a British national but define your national identity as British. Secondly, living here for 15 years and raising 2 British sons in the UK, your family as a whole has a multicultural heritage....including British. I think that is non-sense and am quite surprised, maybe you just had to deal with someone evolving in an area where there is very little immigration or where it is quite recent so they might not have much knowledge of how British any immigrant's life gets 15 years down the line.

Please do not get discouraged, do not start expecting such argument thrown at you either. I am not arrogant enough to say that my experience is everyone's experience but we are also EU immigrants, spent most of the year family finding and had dozens of social workers reading and discussing our PAR prior to identifying our potential match, not a single of them challenged our ability to promote the British part of our children's cultural heritage. Many social workers would see your family's multicultural heritage as a greater potential to be matched, not the opposite, so please, do not worry about this, this is your family's home country, this is where you belong! You will get there, do not fear expressing interest, do not feel inadequate or unwelcome.

Going back to what chesnuttree and safia said, I also think distance might matter: to any party during introductions which can in some agencies be spread over weeks, to the sibling they need frequent direct contact with. Regarding your wish to adopt a baby, if that is due to the age of your youngest son and the age gap and you cannot be flexible on that, maybe you can carry on with the process, keep up with the Linkmaker searches but not change anything to your personal / professional plans until you have a date for matching panel. I understand adopting babies takes a very long time, so you might as well deal with it stress free and keep your mind busy. If adopting a baby is not a must, maybe you should out of curiosity from time to time review profiles out of what you believe to be your ideal match. We fell in love with a profile just outside of the age range initially considered and not part of a sibling group but noisy enough for more than one. We never know.

Sending you a big comforting hug.

Best of luck!

If you are looking for an age group where there is a lot of competition (as there is with babies), then social workers will look to match a child with adopters in every way that they possibly can - including ethnicity/cultural heritage. If you are looking at older children or sibling groups - children who are seen as "harder to place" (not a term I particularly like), where competition is a lot less - then ethnicity/cultural heritage becomes less of an issue. We were approved for ages 0 - 3 and as I said earlier, we were turned down for 2 Polish children. We were eventually matched with our daughter because we matched her ethnicity and religion - birth mum was nominal catholic and half irish - we are nominal catholic and my husband is half irish. I think cultural heritage is important and I can see why we were turned down for the Polish children - even though the children were born here and their birth parents had made the decision to live in this country - they would have been matched with a Polish family who completely understood and shared their background/culture. We would never have been able to do that nor would we have had the family connections to Poland that would/could become very important to a child as they grew - wanting to know or see the country that their birth parents were from or indeed want to live in as an adult.

So if you do want a very young child - you will get matched with a polish child but you may have to wait longer. If you are open to extending your age range then you will no doubt get matched sooner.

But please do not think that this has anything to do with nationalism, because it doesn't. Social workers want to be as sensitive to a child's background that they possibly can. After all, the child will have lost so much already - taking away their cultural heritage as well is not something social workers do lightly.

There are many and varied reasons for being turned down for a match, cultural heritage just one of those. Sws want to find the best possible match for the child and that’s the crux of the matter. In the same way that we, as adoptive parents, sometimes have to recognise that a prospective link isn’t right for us as a family, sws have that same responsibility to the child.

It may be that they felt one or both of those babies needed to be in a family with no existing children. It may be that the child who was 3 hours away had family members with whom there would be ongoing contact. Conversely in other cases long distance placement can be safer. One or both of those babies may have had the possibility of longer term needs which had not yet been identified but sws were aware may be an issue. That’s the thing when you’re wanting to adopt as young as possible - babies come with a lot of uncertainties. The first meeting with sws is just that - the first meeting and the chance to start gathering information. When we adopted a second time it went back and forth for some months before it all fell apart.

You talk about the new baby ... how old are your birth children? Are you able to consider older children? If you’re limited to only considering babies then that’s very competitive and it can be harder to get that baby placed with you if you already have children. These babies will be complex. They will be time consuming. What they won’t be is straightforward regardless of age and maybe that’s something the sws recognise? Rather than it being about you ... it’s about the child/ren and sws wanting to find the best match for them. That’s not meant to sound harsh - we waited 15 months for our first child and 20 for our second. It was harder second time because we all - sws as well - had to consider the needs of our existing child so we had to be extra careful.

We had three babies. Those babies are now all teenagers and two out of three have complex needs which has necessitated me remaining a stay at home mum in order to fight all the battles that needed fighting. It doesn’t end and the needs of the two have impacted on the older one - maybe the sws are aware of how the arrival of an adopted child may impact on your birth children?

Im sure it’ll all come right in the end but it may well take time to get the right match for you, your family and your prospective child. When your child comes home, all this will be forgotten about.

I wish you well