Hello All,
Just looking for advice really and to see if any other adopters in the uk are currently experiencing the same issue as us. We had a meeting with our social worker on Wednesday (8/09/21) who informed us that due to a ‘national baby shortage’ unless current adopters who have a preference for a baby who are with the agency are willing to change their preferences to older children (4+) the adoption agency will no longer continue the adoption process with them. She told us that in order to progress we would need to look at older children 4-7 years old, a sibling group or a disabled baby to continue. She said that we could potentially pause the process for 6 months and see what the demographic for adoption is like then (although the likelihood is nothing would have changed) or we could move to another agency and they would send all relevant information over however as this is a national issue we would face the same obstacles. Should nothing have changed after 6 months and we choose to not adopt at that point we would then have to start the process again “if and when” babies are up for adoption again this would include all references, training, health checks etc despite us coming to the end of stage 1 and beginning stage 2 in the next week or so. I asked her when babies are able to be adopted again how do they match the child to the adopters (as she said they are currently having the same conversation with 46 other people) and she couldn’t give me an answer. We are really disappointed that the agency are making this decision and are meeting with a manager next week, has anyone else met this obstacle or similar and do you have any advice or guidance you could give us? TIA 🤞🏻