Page, Fiona, Sarah, Roddy and Alex, Hina Rajan, Simon , Segun and Seyi , Jessica, Robert and Marilyn, and Tristan and Scott mention difficult
How did it feel having your child taken into care?
“...the only contact I was to have was a letter once a year and no photographs and I wasn’t allowed any other contact with her. And I was gutted isn’t quite the word I would use,”
How did you overcome your loss?
“...it came to a point that I knew that I just had to keep going forward and I had to get on with my life and it was either a case of moving forward,”
How is life after your child has gone in to care?
“...she’s there somewhere. I know she’s alive but she’s with another family.”
How is it being a single adopter?
“the social worker who first came to see me said well I am really going to put you through your paces and make sure you are sure about this”
How did it feel when they first came to your house?
“But my daughter didn’t speak all the way home, which was a good hour, you know. And it was kinda quite tense, so we.. we spent the journey home singing nursery rhymes, and trying to fill those quiet pauses and stuff. ”
Did you think of taking on a child with a disability? Sibling group?
“it was a sort of list of illnesses and disabilities and… and background situations that a child may, or may not, have. And it was really hard, a process… to fill in, because it really confronted you very, very directly with, with the type of child tha”
Why did you decide not to adopt after all?
“...the last eight years we’ve been trying for the next step, if you like, which is a baby. I think, in reality, we’re thinking well, if we take on a child at the age of 46, when we are in our late 50’s our child will be doing his or her 11+ and all ”
What is it like waiting to be adopted?
“I was old enough to understand what was going on and I felt like nobody loved me.”
How do your emotions over your past play out?
“...now that I look back on it, I feel like I could have behaved in a more positive way, but I don’t recall… I don’t recall…you know… I needed help. ”
How was it when you first met your child/ren?
“ ...meeting someone who you had wanted to meet for so long, but not wanting to crowd his world ”
How long did it take for you to bond with your child?
“It was really difficult in fact it came to about the seventh day I got home I was emotionally exhausted I cried all night I thought he didn’t like me”
“I think one of the most important things when placements are getting difficult is to access help early on because the placements that break down are often when people have come for help quite late on and they’re quite deep into crisis”
Why is it that adopted children can present more problems than birth children?
“...in their early childhood they may well have experienced neglect and trauma and therefore that will have affected their development, their ability to trust adults and their ability to make relationships. ”
Is adoption what you expected it to be?
“...you feel as low as you can possibly get and why on earth did I do this and you need somebody with you, or you can phone up if you haven’t got a partner, to say you’ll get through this. At times both of us have felt like this, what on earth did we d”
“But we saw a little girl and Bob came home and said ‘she’s fantastic’, you know, ‘she … she would be really great in our family’, and I was saying ‘yes, however, we’re quite old and she’s only five’.”
Does your child have contact with their birth family?
“...they will naturally type in birth families details at some point and find them, so it is a worry now for us and I don’t really think it is so much of a worry as when they are eighteen…”