The obsession and the horrific negativity of forums

One reason I wanted to write this blog was to highlight the current adoption process- for friends and family and even strangers to understand the difficulties and above all the commitment needed to go through it all. As said already, the 'new' process is totally different to any published book I have read. The onus is on the adopters to find children.

So you become obsessed.

You have to be.

On Obsession

I log on to the website when I wake up and stalk it from 9am to 6pm. Whenever I can I am refreshing the page to see if new profiles have gone on. I have email notifications set up but experience has taught me that sometimes it updates on the site earlier than an email and sometimes the other way around. Sometimes the email notifications don't seem to work and several profiles can go on and still no email- so they aren't reliable.

Why can't I just leave it and check it when I get home?

 Experience has also taught me that it tends to be very much a case of 'the early bird catches the worm'. There have been four occasions where we have enquired and heard back anything between immediately and 10 minutes. This leads me to believe, if the child's social worker is online then there is likelihood they will look at your profile when you enquire. I firmly believe if we left it till we got home we would never get a look in. The system hardly favours those who work, given that all the activity happens in work hours but that is obviously when the social workers work too- so it stands to reason. You have to find a way round it- so both of us have computers and phones logged on to the site throughout the day.

We have, on several occasions, seen profile enquiries go up in the few minutes we take to discuss the profile. It only allows you to see numbers of enquiries up to 5, then it just says 'more than 5'. But this point you know you have limited time to enquire before you become lost in a huge number.

And it can be huge- I have read that a low needs, age 1 and under to 2/3 child can have up to 200 enquiries. A majority will have between 20-50 for a low needs child, less for children with particular and more difficult needs. You can start to realise now why we have to be obsessed with the site, waiting for profiles to go on.

We are pretty good at knowing children that may be a good match for us- we agree on the same things and often will say we are 'not feeling it' about a child and both feel it is a 'no' on the same child or children. You have to be this hard as they have to be right for you and you for them. We have an agreement that if we see a profile and can't contact the other person due to work commitments, we will enquire- as we can always un-enquire later. 

If I am driving, Karl checks the phone, if we are out and about after work, we both check the phone- it is pretty constant. I have stopped taking lunch and breaks with people so I can keep an eye on the site- I am not a recluse but I don't like to spend too much time away from it just in case.

We have just had Easter Weekend and  it was actually really nice to have 4 days where we knew there would be no activity and we could not worry about missing a profile- a little respite!

On Negativity

Once, in stage two, I logged on to Adoption UKs forum. I was met with a wave of negativity of people complaining about the process, the requirements on them and the wait time for children. It made me feel sick and I never logged on again. You have to bear in mind that we didn't enter adoption for years due to the negative stories of others. I knew I didn't need people like this for 'support'.

I do totally understand that some need to vent, that it is a minefiled of confusion and frustration and that some may not want to share this with friends and family. I understand that some will need to support of others in this way. Personally, I am sure there are many like me who are negatively affected by these sorts of posts. I find them very off putting.

Once I joined Adoption Link (it is strange in the fact that only one of you can register to create a profile for you both - so we share the log in details). I noticed there was a support group and various support community based forums. I have not joined any. However I find it very destructive, personally, that the home page of the site, that is the main page that shows your notifications and new profile links, shows new forum posts, about 3 or 4 on the main page- though I have to admit I have learnt a few things too about the process.

Occasionally, these have shown useful information like, 'what to write in enquiry boxes', 'what questions to ask a child's social worker' and various things about the working of the site...but more than anything are the negative posts- people angry about being asked to change things (I mean seriously? How can you not want to just agree with the social workers? they have to decision over your head if you are the ones for the children or not- to be inflexible surely doesn't bode well! We are broody as hell and for example have enjoyed painting and decorating doing this ahead of time! In fact, as I type, a new print arrived for the little room we are making into a second child's bedroom, in fact I know if anyone said 'change that' I would agree and do it- regardless of time , effort or cost). There are people who are angry at never receiving a reason as to why they are rejected (normal, unfortunately, though totally understandable as it is very hard to take with no detail) and worst of all, people who are sharing their upset and anger at waiting 2 or 3 years since panel approval and several giving up on adoption because of this (this must be horrific and I hope we do not have to wait that long but it is so very frightening for newer approved adopters who see the journey as potentially never ending and ultimately a waste of time- to give up after all they have been through).

Recently there has been a lot of these stories popping up and it is so disheartening that they don't appear to be one offs. This is exceedingly damaging to new adopters- it stresses me out, I worry that it may never happen after the journey we have had so far. I think about how they all must have been good enough to be approved, why are they all not good enough according to other social workers? Are they too picky? Are they too self-focused in meetings? Or are there simply too many adopters and not enough children? (in the most cases- probably this!). We will never know, thought it is true that there are far more adopters than children up for adoption. It is hard to ignore these posts as they are right there on the home page, it is hard to not read them and worry about them and it is hard to carry on in a positive manner and brush it off.

It is well known that people don't spread good news- it is not noteworthy. People with good news are too full of having good times and not needing to brag or share, they are simply getting on with it. We have to keep telling ourselves that there are good stories, we know of some with our own agency that haven't waited that long. I sometimes if it would be nice to see some statistics of how long adopters are currently waiting- I have tried to research this- these are the best figures I can find from March 2015, a year ago
http://corambaaf.org.uk/res/statengland

This states that there are, number wise, there are only a hundred or so more adopters than children, however, I don't know if a couple count as a two or one- I am thinking they count as one. Likewise, remember 'one' adopter can tak on 2-3 children- meaning the actual numbers of  placements fall as that means a sibling group reduces the number waiting but they only go to 'one' adopter. There are a lot of sibling groups.

This is why I would like it if the home page did not have recent forum posts on- negativity nearly made us never look into this and this continued negativity is tiring. A more comprehensive FAQ or info bank on the useful stuff would be much better.

Of course people are angry, upset, frustrated and heartbroken by the promise of a family and the actuality of gaining it, after their own personal long and difficult journeys and how this last stage seems hopeless. It would be nice to hear more from those that get matched more, those that have had positive responses and those that have lots of useful information to share. The negativity seems to come in waves.