X. The Application Process, Page 2

Adoption Preparation Classes

These are to us what ante-natal classes are to people having their children the other way. No breathing exercises for us, although there may be some practice in nappy changing. Adopter preparation classes cover a lot of the same ground as this book, under the guidance of adoption social workers. They cover:

Why people adopt,
What kinds of children are available,
Why children come into care,
The adoption process itself,
Legal aspects of adoption,
Contact with the birth family,
Tracing,
Problems adopted children can have in growing up,
Discipline,
“Telling”,
Relationships with the community.

They are group classes, with a number of prospective adopters meeting together. They can involve homework, but of the introspective kind, not things like writing essays about “Adoption in Ancient Sumer” or “The Foundling as a Plot Device in the Seventeenth-Century French Novel”. There will be times for talking about very private feelings with people who until recently were strangers, but who soon become friends, and for sharing things which make you laugh or cry or think really hard. You will soon find that for the next few months there will be virtually nothing about you which is private. Get used to it. There will also be times for listening to social workers and outside speakers. The outside speakers will include people with experience of adoption: grown-up adoptees, birth parents and adopters, and can also include doctors, psychologists, lawyers, etc.

The classes should be a time of personal growth, learning about yourself at least as much as you learn about adoption. Part of the purpose of the classes is to help people decide whether adoption really is the road they want to take, which is why most agencies make you go through them before making a formal application or at the same time as the home study. Another important aspect is to help people decide what kind of child they could consider adopting. The classes are part of the assessment process, and not an optional extra. There may not be an exam at the end, but you are being observed and evaluated.

Your Classmates or the Competition?

There is a temptation to view the other prospective adopters in the preparation class as your rivals. You and they know that there is a large number of people chasing a finite number of children. This is the wrong attitude. They are not your rivals. Remember that adoption is a service primarily for children. Social workers do not allocate children to adopters by lottery or on a first come basis. Each child’s needs are carefully assessed and then matched against the pool of potential adopters to find the best match of skills to meet those needs. The only time you would be rivals is if you both had virtually identical backgrounds, skills, experience, circumstances and abilities and wanted to adopt the same type of child, and this is not going to be the case. The child who goes to Mr and Mrs X instead of you would probably not have gone to you even if Mr and Mrs X weren’t around. He went to them because they were right for him. Just as at some point we all hope there will be a child for whom you are the right Mr and Mrs Y (or Miss Z or Mr S). If there is no good match available in the agency’s pool of waiting families, a child would not (I hope) go to the least worst family on their books, nor to the Q family because they have been waiting the longest; his details would be circulated around other agencies and clearing houses, even advertised in the press or on television, until the best good match were found for him.

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