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Here is a list of the most common questions we get asked. If your question doesn’t appear, click the ask a question link above and we’ll do our best to answer it.
For more information, request a free information pack or alternatively, feel free to call us on 0300 123 1066 for a confidential chat.
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Yes, you will need to be able to provide a child or children with their own bedroom. Sibling groups can share depending on size of group, ages and their own needs.
What do we mean by ‘spare bedroom’
You need to have an empty bedroom that is not currently being used by anyone else living in your home, whilst you (and any birth children or family members living with you) also have a bedroom to call your own to be able to adopt. This will ensure that your adopted child has a safe, private space to call their own, no matter what the age of the child.
Some children who require adoption may have shared bedrooms before but we know how important it is for them to have their own bedroom when joining your family.
We would also recommend avoiding the situation where your existing children are required to move rooms or perhaps give up some space perhaps with renovations in order to accommodate another child. In our experience, although existing children might agree to such arrangements, be excited about it, it may lead to problems in the future. All children have their own specific individual needs and they are the most important aspect in all our decisions. We never underestimate the sense of value and importance that having a space of our own can mean.
There are certain criminal convictions that are considered a bar to adoption but we will look into all criminal convictions on an individual basis and take into consideration the circumstances and time of the offence/s. We would ask you to be honest and advise any convictions as early in the process as possible so we can discuss this with you.
Every adopter and child is unique so this isn’t a question we like to answer without explanation. We have to ensure that the ‘match’ between an adopter and any child is right for everyone concerned and that sometimes takes time. Also, sometimes life gets in the way! Circumstances change, work, children, extended family and that’s fine, but this all affects timescales and the child is the most important aspect in all our work, it has to be right for them now and in the future so we will never be pressurised by timescales. We have looked at our ‘waiting’ times for our families for the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023:
73% of our adopters were matched with children under 6 months of approval
The average time from approval to matching with a child or children for ALL families was 5 months
No, we welcome applications from single people. If you are a couple applying to adopt you don’t have to be married but you do need to be living together and in a stable relationship but we can discuss this with you further.
We know that today families today come in all shapes and sizes, but we understand that it can sometimes be daunting to attend a new event alone. That’s why we allow all of our single parents to bring a ‘plus one’ to all of our Centre for Adoption Support training courses, webinars and events free of charge.
Yes.
There is nothing unusual about single parenting, in 2021, there were 3.0 million single parent families in the UK.
It has been possible for single people to adopt for many, many years and we have approved and placed children with many single adopters, including single people who identify as LGBTQ+. At Adoption Matters, we know that today families today come in all shapes and sizes, but we understand that it can sometimes be daunting to attend a new event alone. That’s why we allow all of our single parents to bring a ‘plus one’ to all of our Centre for Adoption Support training courses, webinars and events free of charge.
As part of applying to adopt applicants have a medical that is usually conducted by their own G.P. Many health issues do not prevent people from adopting and the medical is influential in helping us decide about this.
In general, we are looking for people who are physically fit and well enough to manage the day to day challenges of adopting and who have a good enough level of emotional wellbeing to cope with the stresses that applying to adopt and parenting can bring.
We are sometimes asked in particular about weight and BMI. We do not have fixed rules about BMI and welcome applications from all, but where there is an applicant with a BMI over 40 this issue will need careful exploration throughout the assessment process and applicants need to be able to provide evidence of a healthy lifestyle and commitment to weight loss.
While there is no regulatory requirement for a couple to be in a relationship for a specified period of time before they can adopt, the adoption process can be stressful and we would need some evidence that a relationship is likely to be able to withstand the adoption process before we start any assessment and applicants also need to be able to provide references who can comment on the strength of their partnership.
Therefore, usually we would expect that a couple have lived together for about two years before we progress any enquiry. If you have any questions about this or your relationship is less than two years please speak to us for advice.
Of course, children love animals! However, we have to ensure that whatever pets you have are safe to be around children. We carry out a dog assessment as standard for all applicants who apply to adopt with Adoption Matters, these assessments are carried out by an independent professional company. We may also ask for further assessments on other animals if we feel suitable.
Adoption agencies do not charge to assess or approve adopters for domestic adoption, that is an adoption made in the UK. There are costs that apply to Inter-country adoption, full information is available here.
Adoption Matters is a registered charity and not for profit organisation. However, prospective adopters do incur some costs during the process.
You will require a medical with your own GP who will charge a fee of around £80 – £120 per person. This fee is set by your own GP, not by ourselves and does vary depending on where you live and your own GP’s arrangements.
If you have lived overseas, there may also be charges for overseas checks, which again, will vary depending on the country.
If you own a dog, it will need to have an assessment by an approved assessor. This costs approximately £83, plus expenses. If the advice of a vet is needed for other pets you may have, the vet is likely to charge a fee for this.
When an adoption application is made to court, there is a one-off court fee of around £183. One child or multiple siblings filed together is one fee of £183. If filed separately, and at different times, then a fee is payable of £183 each time.
The local authority looking after the child sometimes covers the court fees on behalf of the adopters and should also make a commitment to pay any additional legal fees or court costs, so this should not be a cost to you.
There are other costs that may you need to consider such as time off work to attend meetings and training, travel and childcare expenses and then possible lifestyle changes in the future such as additional childcare costs or reducing your hours, but we will discuss all this with you during your assessment. Do not worry, you do not have to be wealthy to adopt, but you you will need to be financially stable and able to support yourself and your child or children now and in the future.
As a charity, we are unable to assist or reimburse any fees or costs that you may incur during your assessment and/or adoption process including in the event you decide to withdraw your application and/or are not approved as an adopter.
Yes, we have a need for adopters for a wide age range of children from babies right up to 7 year olds. We treat each enquiry on an individual basis so do contact us for an informal chat with one of our experienced enquiry team from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Friday, call free on 0300 123 1066. We also hold regular online chats and online adoption events.
Adoption Matters aims to provide children, young people and their families with services that value and celebrate difference, promote equal opportunities and ensure the best outcome for children who are adopted. In an increasingly diverse society, caring for a child from a different ethnic background can also introduce a more global mind set to family life. A multicultural family is defined as a place, or a situation that consists or relates to many nationalities, cultures, and several races. We want families who are open to diversity.
More information is available in our leaflet Adopting a child from a different ethnicity – A guide for prospective adopters
Having a disability does not exclude people from becoming adopters and it is widely recognised that people with disabilities can often provide a very loving home for a child. Disability is only one of the many issues that we will consider so don’t rule yourself out.
It is also recognised that the life experiences of people with a disability can give them a unique insight into the lives of children in care, who often have a sense of themselves as ‘different’ or who may also have a disability. Living alongside disability in the context of positive relationships can teach children the importance of inclusivity and how to value difference.
As part of the adoption assessment you will undergo a full medical with your own GP. Their recommendation to is sent to an adoption panel Medical Adviser who will assess the information provided our assessing social workers will also explore with you any potential impact this may have on parenting and how these would be managed.
Employed adopters are usually entitled to adoption leave and may be entitled to adoption pay, which is a legal right. Some employers may offer a more generous scheme than the statutory one, but they cannot offer less than the statutory amounts.
As January 2023, Statutory Adoption Leave is 52 weeks. It’s made up of:
The latest guidance on adoption leave and pay is available here: https://www.gov.uk/adoption-pay-leave/leave
There are lots of checks required for applicants wishing to adopt. This is guided by law and governed by the Government body Ofsted. The checks are to ensure that we place vulnerable children in the safest and stable homes possible. They include, police checks known as DBS, education, probation, social services, we will ask you for several personal references and will need to speak to your previous partners.
If you currently or have previously worked with children, we will need to seek employer references. There are certain criminal convictions that are considered a bar to adoption but we will look into all criminal convictions on an individual basis and take into consideration the circumstances and time of the offence/s. We would ask you to be honest and advise any convictions as early in the process as possible so we can discuss this with you.
Yes, it is essential that you are clear about your domicile and habitual residence as early as possible. For single applicants, the law states that they must either be domiciled in the UK, or habitually resident for at least a year before making an application. For couples, one of the applicants must be domiciled in the UK or both must be habitually resident in the UK for at least a year before making an application to adopt. In in doubt, talk to us and we may recommend that you seek independent legal advice.
The adoption process should take around 6 months. In general, the timescale for completion of Stage 1 (from your registration of interest to formal application) – we take this at your pace, but aim to complete it in 2 months.
For Stage 2 (from your assessment to your approval at our adoption panel) again, we would take this at your pace but we aim to complete this stage within 4 months.
However, we are led by your wishes and you can slow this process down at any stage. You will need to be available for several meetings with your assessing social worker during the assessment process. We can arrange for some evening visits if required to suit availability but we cannot solely conduct our assessments outside normal office hours. Full details of the process can be found here on our website.
No. You can adopt if you are in a rented accommodation and you do not need to have a ‘big’ home. However, you will need to be able to provide a child or children with their own bedroom. Sibling groups can share dependent on size of group, ages and their own needs. All children have their own specific individual needs and they are the most important aspect in all our decisions.
Many of our families say they chose Adoption Matters due to our commitment to ongoing support. We offer support from your first email or call, throughout your adoption assessment, to the placement of a child or children, through to their first days at school, college and beyond, for as long as you need it.
We offer support to prospective adopters, approved adopters and their extended family, adopted adults and birth families.
We offer a unique support and therapy service supporting adoption and permanency through our Centre for Adoption Support. The Centre offers a wide range of therapeutic support from a highly skilled team including occupational therapists. Our therapy service offers assessments conducted by a clinical psychologist and interventions include approaches that incorporate developments in neuropsychology, brain development, and sensory integration.
The Centre offers a wide range of webinars are free of charge for Adoption Matters families and Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) families that are currently receiving support from the Centre for Adoption Support. If you are an adopter, special guardian or foster carer from a different agency, the cost to attend our webinars is £15 per person. We also offer a suite of online training videos from the Centre free of charge for anyone to access here: www.adoptionmatters.org/onlinetraining
Children enter care for a variety of reasons in England and Wales; unfortunately, today and historically, the most common reason identified is ‘because they were at risk of abuse or neglect’.
If social work teams are unable to help the birth family to make it safe for children to return to live at home with birth family and if it isn’t possible or suitable to live with extended family, the decision may be made by courts that a child requires long term care through either adoption or long term fostering. Long term fostering is sometimes a more suitable option for older children over the age of 8 years.
Most of the children placed for adoption are initially cared for by their foster carers prior to placement for adoption, some maybe placed in an early permanence placement.
Adoption is only right for a very small percentage of all children looked after in care. In 2022, the number of children looked after by local authorities in England was 82,170, in this year 2,950 children were adopted. Children who are adopted are likely to have better health, achieve more in education and have better employment prospects than children in alternative permanent arrangements, according to the evidence currently available.
Children in care come from all walks of life, backgrounds and cultures. They have different needs and experiences like all children. One thing we know about children who enter care is that, they will be feeling a whole range of emotions and will often be frightened. All children will have experienced separation, loss and uncertainty.
There are groups of children who wait longer than any other children for an adoptive home. Children from Black, Mixed and Other ethnic groups are over-represented in the numbers of children in care system so children from these ethnic groups often wait longer, in addition to:
Your social worker will discuss what age range you are thinking of during your initial enquiry. We will also explore and explain lots of options open to you including early permanence options such as fostering for adoption or concurrent planning.
There are groups of children who wait longer than any other children for an adoptive home. Children from Black, mixed and other ethnic groups are over-represented in the numbers of children in care system so children from these ethnic groups often wait longer, in addition to:
In our 75 year history, we have placed over 4,000 children with our families.
There are 1,980 children waiting for adoption in England
– 1,170 / 59% of these children wait longer if they:
Source statistics from June 2023 – Average times from entry into care to adoption for children who had been adopted in the first three quarters in 2022/23. Produced by the Children’s and Social Care Secretariat, delivered by Coram-I.
Yes. We will draw up an individual post placement and post adoption support plan with you in conjunction with the local authority/Regional Adoption Agency who is placing the child, so that everyone is in agreement about the level of support that you might require.
Many of our families say they chose Adoption Matters due to our commitment to ongoing support. We offer support from your first email or call, throughout your adoption assessment, to the placement of a child or children, through to their first days at school, college and beyond, for as long as you need it.
We offer support to prospective adopters, approved adopters and their extended family, adopted adults and birth families.
Our innovative Centre for Adoption Support provides a wide range of support and training services for adoption and permanency, for both families and children.
Our webinars are free of charge for Adoption Matters families and Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) families that are currently receiving support from the Centre for Adoption Support. If you are an adopter, special guardian or foster carer from a different agency, the cost to attend our webinars is £15 per person
Yes! We welcome and encourage enquiries from people who have birth children. You can adopt whether you have children still living at home or if they have grown up and live elsewhere. You will have to consider the ages of your birth children when considering what age of child or children you are considering for adoption.
Again, the needs of our adoptive children must be paramount and you must also consider that sometimes a child awaiting adoption needs and emotional age can be very different to their chronological age.
Adoption Matters is rated Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ since 2008. We are the ONLY adoption service in the UK to achieve 5 Ofsted Outstanding ratings consecutively.
We are an independent organisation, our priority is to find stable and loving homes for children through adoption and early permanence and offer ongoing support to our families and adopted adults. That is all we do and we have been doing it for over 76 years.
With our age comes experience and we also are at the forefront of innovation in adoption and early permanence practice. Our independence allows us to implement new practices and respond to children and families’ needs quickly.
As a voluntary adoption agency, Adoption Matters works in partnership with local authorities and regional adoption agencies across the whole of the UK to find families for children in care who are unable to stay with their birth relatives.
We do not have children ‘in our care’ but this allows us to offer our families a much wider ‘pool’ of children that our teams work with to look for the very best match for both them and for our families. If we feel that a link with a child is not right for everyone involved, we will not endorse it. We have a very low adoption disruption rate and our adopters feel ‘exceptionally well supported’.
Our teams are all permanent members of staff and we have very low staff turnover. Some of our colleagues have celebrated 20, 30 and 40 years service in the last few years. This stability in our workforce allows our families to build strong, ongoing relationships throughout their journey with us. At Adoption Matters, we refer to our colleagues as our ‘work family’ and despite considerable growth over the last few years, we haven’t lost the friendly team ethos of helping each other when needed. We have a staff well-being charter and a number of trained Mental Health First Aiders across the organisation.
Hear from some of our adopters tell you why they chose Adoption Matters here.
No! Legally, adopters need to be over 21 but there is no upper age limit. We are all living longer these days and life expectancy has risen so much in the last two decades that we welcome enquirers of all ages.
We will expect you to have the health and vitality to see your children through to an age of independence, so consideration will be given to your age comparative to the age of the child you want to adopt; younger children are more likely to be placed with younger parents.
We are both. Adoption Matters is a registered children’s charity which specialises in adoption and adoption support. We are a non profit making organisation, inspected and regulated by Ofsted as an independent voluntary adoption agency (VAA). Adoption Matters is rated Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ since 2008. We are the ONLY adoption service in the UK to achieve 5 Ofsted Outstanding ratings consecutively.
Whether you are LGBTQ+ is not a factor in your right to adopt. If you identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Non-Binary, we welcome your enquiry. We also recognise the resilience, determination and the challenges that you may have overcome in your life.
Sexuality and gender is not on the ‘list’ when looking at what makes a good parent or adopter! What is important is the time, love and commitment you have to offer a child waiting for their forever home through adoption to put their needs above your own.
We are proud members of New Family Social the UK network for LGBTQ+ adoptive and foster families which allows all our approved adopters free membership. Following public nominations and a judging panel held in September 2021, Adoption Matters received commended agency status for 2021 by New Family Social’s LGBTQ+ adopter and foster carer members. Some 130 nominations and testimonials for agencies and social workers were received from LGBTQ+ people at different stages of the adoption process.
New Family Social’s nominating members said:
“[Adoption Matters is] so child centred, very supportive and really, really had our back through complications”.
“They provide [Adoption Matters] life[long] adoption support [to us]”.
There are lots of ways you can help our charity through fundraising. Have a look at our fundraising page for the different ways. Alternatively, you can get in touch with us on 0300 123 1066 and thank you.
Yes, we would love to hear from anyone who is interested in volunteering for us. We are always looking for volunteers to help spread our adoption message. Just get in touch with us by clicking the contact us button or give us a call on 0300 123 1066.
Support from family and friends is essential. Adoption is not something you should do in isolation as you will need to draw on practical and emotional support in planned and in emergency situations. Your social worker will look carefully with you at your existing support network and that which you may develop in the future.
Adopting through Adoption Matters means you will have the added security of access to the Centre for Adoption Support, which offers a wide variety of workshops, webinars, events and specialist therapeutic support for both families and children.
You do not have to live in a big house, be ‘wealthy’ or be in employment to adopt, but you will need to demonstrate that you are financially stable and able to support yourself and your child or children now and in the future. Your finances will be discussed during your assessment, if there is anything you are unsure about, raise it with us as early as possible. Children waiting for adoption need stability, love and commitment from their adopters. Also look at the FAQ around costs to adopt which can be found here: https://www.adoptionmatters.org/faq/costs
If a previous relationship has resulted in the birth of any children we are required by Regulations to contact this ex-partner and seek his/her views, unless doing so would put you at risk. If you are at all worried about this please let us know. Please be reassured that we understand that relationships can end acrimoniously and references from ex-partners may not always be positive, we look at this information carefully in the light of all the other information we have gathered.
If you have lived with an ex-partner, even though there have not been any children from this relationship, it is good practice for us to try and contact them too.
We know that people often lose touch and we would ask that you make attempts to trace them via mutual friends or family or via social media. Again if you are particularly worried about this, please talk to us, we would never want to put someone at risk to get this information.
If you have been in a relationship of a significant duration (i.e. over 12 months) but haven’t lived together, again, we would want to, if possible, try to contact this person and obtain a reference. If you feel there is a reason that we shouldn’t do this again please talk to us about this. We would never seek references without your consent or knowledge.
Adoption Matters is committed to providing a quality service which is efficient, effective, timely and conducted in an open, friendly and respectful manner. It is useful to know what people think about our work as this helps us to improve and develop our service. We regularly survey our service users to ask for feedback. If you would like to feedback any comments, compliments or complaints, please download our leaflet below:
