XII. Waiting for a Placement

Well, you’ve made it; the agency has accepted your application. I’m assuming for this chapter that you have been accepted in general, and not accepted for a particular child. If you’ve been matched with a particular child, you can skip this chapter and go to the next one.

So, you sit back and wait for a few weeks until they phone up to tell you there’s a child waiting for you, right? Wrong. There can be lots to keep you busy at least part of the time. However, first, two words of caution:

Caution I. Acceptance is No Guarantee of a Placement

That’s right. You may have been approved, but there is no guarantee that you will get a child soon or even at all. Agencies will often accept people as prospective adopters with no particular child in view, and if no child that would fit to your family turns up, you don’t get one. This doesn’t mean that agencies recklessly add names to their lists of approved adopters on the off-chance that they will meet the needs of some unforeseen child — assessment is far too expensive a process for them to afford that luxury.

But not getting a child from your assessing and approving agency doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough (if that were true you would not have been accepted in the first place), and it is definitely not the end of the story if you have been accepted as prospective adopters of a child with special needs or a sibling group.

Caution II. Approval is Not Permanent: Reassessment

Your approval for adoption is not permanent. If you wait more than two years for a placement your assessment will have to be updated, and a material change in any of your circumstances can affect your continued approval. If your latest medical report is over six months old when you make a formal application to adopt a child it will need to be confirmed. You will also need to notify the agency if someone else joins your household (police and social services checks may have to be made), you are arrested or convicted of a crime, become pregnant, move house, are made bankrupt, etc. Some events will mean that your approval has to be officially reconsidered or even revoked.

Approaching Other Agencies

After a few months, if no prospect of a placement is on the horizon, you should speak to your social worker. If you are with a local authority agency they will probably need prodding, but there comes a point where you have the moral right to look elsewhere. If you are with a voluntary agency they should be more proactive about this, and may raise the subject themselves with you, even very early on, if they have been unable to place a child with you. The agency is naturally torn about the options. If they let you try other agencies they may lose you, a valuable placement resource, but they know a child somewhere else may have a chance at a family which might otherwise be missed. And if another agency places a child with you, “buying” your file and assessment from them, the first agency can at least recoup a substantial part of their financial outlay in assessing you.

What options are available to you now? You could apply on spec to other agencies just in case they have the right child for you, but this is inefficient. You will no doubt have long since become familiar with the advertisements in newspapers and magazines profiling individual children for whom agencies have so far been unable to find parents. By all means respond if you happen to see one for a child who you think might be right for you. But again, you never know when the child for you will turn up in a media advertisement. There are two better ways: clearing houses and listings services.

Before going down this path, you need to know that there is an etiquette to approaching other agencies.

You need to get permission from your own agency before you start looking elsewhere.
You should not have more than one application for a child on the go at one time. To do so means you will almost certainly be wasting one set of social workers’ time.
You do not have to get your social worker’s permission before applying for a child you find in an photolisting service, but you may find it useful to get her advice. She can also make the approach on your behalf.
You need to inform your own social worker whenever you either make significant contact with a new agency, or make an application for a particular child with another agency. This lets her know that she may expect to hear from the social worker. Likewise, if you withdraw from an application, you need to let your own original social worker know.
You are likely to get a dressing down from your agency if you send a bootlegged photocopy of your Form F to anyone else without permission, like we once did. (We got the child in the end, though, so it was worth it!)

The new agency is supposed to pay a fee to the original agency which made the assessment in order to get your documents from them, but that’s a matter between them and you will not be involved.

A new agency is likely to accept your assessment and approval by another agency in principle, although some will insist on doing their own assessment from scratch, or a top-up or mini-assessment, if they have particular requirements, and they will almost certainly want to visit you or have you visit them in person. Even if they accept your original assessment, there is still the matter of matching you with the individual child, which can be smooth or bumpy and may be unsuccessful in the end.