VIII. Who Can Adopt?, Page 5
Social Class
Historically adopters have been significantly better educated and with higher incomes than average, but you do not have to be middle class to adopt. In fact there are stories of people being turned down for being too middle class. You do not need lots of money, you don’t have to own your own home or a car. You don’t have to have a white-collar job, or even any job at all. As I’ve mentioned already in this book, one of the great achievements of the British adoption system is that is has largely taken the financial factor out of adoption.
Your Educational Background
This is pretty irrelevant, as long as you are literate. A positive attitude towards education is important: will you be the kind of parents who read to your children, who help with homework, who help them perform up to their ability in school, who co-operate with the school, who will help your children get any special help they need?
Wanting the best for your child doesn’t mean pushing him too hard, sending him to crammers and telling him how disappointed you are in him when he decides to become a council maintenance man instead of following you into the family merchant bank. High achievers can sometimes have overly high expectations of their children, and no matter how open-minded you may think you are now, when your child is 17 you may find your attitudes very different. Inverse snobbery can be a problem, too. If you work on an automobile factory assembly line, will you be able to accept it if you child decides she wants to be a barrister?
Your Work and Income; Other Money Matters
If you have the parenting skills the agency wants, your income is pretty much irrelevant. If you don’t have the parenting skills a child needs, no amount of money will get on an agency’s list of approved adopters. The agency will simply want to be sure that any child placed with you will be financially secure. And if you have the skills they want for a particular child there is the adoption allowance to help out. This is a discretionary, means-tested benefit, paid by the agency to the adopters. It can also be enhanced to cover extra expenses a particular child with special needs may incur, such as specially made shoes, heavy laundry bills, equipment, and transportation costs to hospital. And it can be supplemented by Section 23 payments to cover large initial outlays like furniture, special equipment, even a larger car or an extension on the house, if you need them.
The above does not apply if you are adopting from overseas. There is no financial help for overseas adoptions, and adopting from overseas is itself quite an expensive undertaking. Worse yet, if you are dependent on state benefits for your income you will not be allowed by the British authorities to bring a child into the UK for adoption.
If you get an adoption allowance you will have to file an annual income and expenses report and also tell the agency about any significant changes in your circumstances in the meantime. As a means-tested benefit, it can be adjusted up or down, and it ends the same time as child benefit (which you are eligible for from the day of placement — not of formal adoption). A child with special needs may well be eligible for other social security benefits, and you may be eligible for invalid care allowance, too.
If you are not working, the social worker will want to know why. If there is a good reason or you are seriously looking for a job, don’t worry too much. (There’s always the possibility of taking on a large sibling group with big problems and both of you becoming full-time parents!) Chronic dole scroungers, however, need not apply.
If You Both Work or You Are Single
In many cases agencies are not bothered if you both work, or if you are a single adopter in work, as long as you can work out a plan so that the child has consistent and appropriate care while you are working. If you both intend to continue to work full time after adopting, you will probably be advised to adopt a child of school age. If you both work part time or one works from home, so that one of you is always able to be at home when the child is, so much the better. But you must remember that the child’s interests come first, and you should seriously consider whether you both really need to work. In spite of what the lifestyle magazines say, you can’t have it all. If both of you feel your careers are too important to you to give up or scale down in order to adopt, then maybe you should rethink your decision to adopt. Something has to give, and it had better not be the child’s care. The range of children you can consider adopting expands significantly if one of you is a full-time homemaker.
The situation for single adopters is pretty much the same, except that the social workers recognise that you really don’t have much choice but to work. You do need to demonstrate adequate child care arrangements, though, and a strong local support network of friends or family.
Regardless of your employment, you will definitely need to be able to spend a lot of time with your new child when she arrives, though, so start buttering up your boss now, statutory parental leave or not.
Your Home and Lifestyle
You need to have an adequate house, with enough bedrooms, in reasonable repair, and safe. It makes no difference if you live in council flat or housing authority house, but living on a sink estate where half the houses are either boarded up or inhabited by crack addicts will definitely not help your chances, no matter what you are like as a family.
The social worker will not go around with white gloves checking that you dust the tops of the door frames, but she will be alarmed at bare electrical wires, buckets standing around to catch the rain coming through the ceiling, a slavering Alsatian tied to the back door, six half-dismantled cars rusting in the front yard and mushroom farms in the wardrobes. These can indicate not a lack of money but lack of sensible spending habits or a bad social attitude.
Do You Have Pets?
Pets can come into play in adoption in four ways:
- If you keep dangerous pets you may be asked why, and it may be strongly suggested that you get rid of them for the child’s safety.
- There will be a problem if a child placed with you has an allergy to your pet.
- Some disturbed children may be a danger to pets.
- But a safe pet can be a great asset, giving children something they can relate to easily, on the way to learning to relate to adults, someone to talk to when they feel unhappy, someone they know loves them unconditionally and totally, and a way of helping them learn responsibility and care for others.
Your Hobbies
Most hobbies are neutral. But does your hobby consume so much of your spare time and interest that there is a question whether you have enough left over for a child’s needs? Is it selfishly expensive? Does it expose you to such danger that the possibility of your early death or disability needs to be considered? Or is it a hobby which you could share with a child? You might want to consider trading in your mountain climbing gear for fly-fishing tackle; instead of collecting 14th-century woodcuts, you might change to beer mats!
© Roger Ridley Fenton
