International Adoption Guide

Yes, I am signed up to the Beyond Consequences Parenting course but life kind of gets in the way and I have yet to start. My apologies for those who were anticipating my blogs as well as to Heather - but I will start this week so please keep a look out for how parenting a child with slight RAD can be improved!

It has been a very encouraging January as the inter-county adoption community came together to fight against the DCSF consultation to charge for their services. The jury is still out, but many strong arguments have been put forward by the stake holders in international adoption as well as individual parents whose experience of the DCSF (always get that wrong...somehow the fact that schools comes before families is pretty indicative of their policies) brings their blood to the boil. I pray that they see sense and decide that there are better ways to boost the government coffers then milking the handful of inter-country adopters.

Yes, only 200 'applications for adoption' were received by the DCSF last year - they do not issue actual figures of children coming home - so we are not talking about a lot of people. I chatted to an adopter from Ireland last night and she was shocked that the UK adopt such a small amount of children from overseas. Ireland adopts around 2000 children a year. One of the reasons she was explaining to me was that you cannot adopt domestically in Ireland - she was saying that she looks longingly over the sea and thinks how easy it is in the UK.

Well I put her right on that one, domestic adoption is also fraught in this country as verified by another woman I spoke to who is adopting from Russia. She has been in the domestic system for 8 years and never succeeded in adopting - well it almost happened twice - but ooops they found another family, and oh that child wasn't actually available for adoption.

The more I hear of these stories, the more I want to write the book/make the movie! Haven't even mentioned the horrific situation in Haiti - next blog.