https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/11/adoption-parties-best-way-children-parents-meetAdoption parties: the best way for children and parents to meet?
Critics have called adoption parties 'cattle markets for kids' but the evidence suggest that these events make happy matches for children and parents
They have been called "cattle markets for kids", "fashion parades" and even "speed dating for toddlers". Bridget Betts, who masterminded the introduction of adoption parties to Britain three years ago, says that if she had £1 for every time she'd heard these descriptions, she'd be a rich woman. "Some people seem to think we put the children up on a stage and would-be parents in the audience choose the ones they like," she says.
The reality, she says, is very different. Adoption parties or adoption activity days, as Bridget prefers to call them are fun-filled events that bring together children looking for parents and parents looking for children in other words, kids in care and would-be adopters. The idea is that, in an informal setting, the adults can mingle with the children and get a sense of what they are really like, rather than having to rely on written descriptions as has been the case traditionally. All the same, Bridget a social worker for more than 30 years who now works for the British Association for Adoption and Fostering – doesn't mind that many people have deep doubts about these events. "We're talking about finding families for children in care the most vulnerable in our society," she says. "So it's right that we should be concerned about what happens to them. And I understand why aspects of these events make people feel uncomfortable."
Adoption parties were last in vogue in the 1970s but they fell out of fashion though not in the US, where they have continued to be a popular way of matching children and families. It's partly due to their success there that the adoption powers-that-be in Britain decided in 2010 to look into them. Bridget was employed to run a pilot project of five parties. When it became clear to everyone that around 20% of the children the hardest-to-place ones were finding families, more events were approved. Over the next few months, 19 parties are planned across Britain. More will follow. Why do they work?
Well, says Bridget, the relationship between a child and adoptive parents, like every other relationship in life, is bound by that magical ingredient known as "chemistry". And there can't be chemistry when prospective adopters simply sit down with a booklet and browse through description after description of children in care. "You can write down their story and that can sometimes sound quite scary and you can give their age and other facts and figures. But it's when you come face to face that you find out whether there's chemistry," she says.
Her argument is illustrated beautifully by the story of Thomas, who was a two-year-old with a serious heart condition when he went to the first adoption activity day Bridget organised. Like all the activity days, the atmosphere resembled a wedding reception at which the children have been especially well catered for. The priority on the day, says Bridget, is to make sure the children have a whale of a time. So there are magicians and entertainers, music and child-friendly food. Thomas, being two, was too young to know why his foster parents had taken him along. He was playing happily in the ball pond when Ruth and Craig, aged 34 and 29 respectively, spotted him across the crowded room. Ruth and Craig were not actively looking for a child that day. They hadn't even been approved as adopters they were at the very start of their search, having recently decided not to embark on fertility treatment. "Our social worker suggested we come to the event just to get a feel for the landscape," recalls Ruth. "She said, what it isn't about is looking for 'your' child."
In fact the couple had browsed through profiles of the children who were attending the party that day and, says Ruth, Thomas hadn't jumped out at them. For one thing, they had decided they didn't want a child with a medical condition. But then Ruth, 34, sat down near to where Thomas was playing and something happened. "He immediately toddled over and parked himself on my knee," she says. "Straight away I knew this was someone very special."
Ruth and Craig spent as long as they could playing with Thomas and talking to his foster parents, but eventually had to tear themselves away. "We'd been warned not to monopolise individual children and I knew I had to move on," says Ruth. "But it was a wrench. Throughout the rest of the party I kept pretending I needed to go to the loo just so I could peep back into the room to check how he was doing."
Two years on, Thomas is Ruth and Craig's son. Thomas is in the reception class at the school where Ruth teaches. She confesses that, like all mothers, she worries about how he's getting on. "I never thought I'd be a fussy mum but, guess what, I fuss all the time about him. If he's got a sniffle, I'll ask his teacher to keep an eye on him. But it's absolutely brilliant having him so close to me all day long."
Talk to Ruth and it's obvious how much she adores her son. Since she and Craig became his parents – the adoption was finalised in October 2012 – she has had to deal with breast cancer. "When they told me, my first reaction was, I can't have cancer – I've got a child to look after," she says. "And the nurse said that's what every mum who gets this news says."
Through the long months of treatment, being Thomas's mother was an enormous help to Ruth. "When you've got a child you've got to keep on going, because normal life has to go on for him," she says.
Her illness has brought them together in another way too because now Ruth, like Thomas, has had to deal with a serious medical problem. Soon after the adoption party, and before going to live with them, Thomas had heart surgery. Despite all she has been through, Ruth says the hardest thing of all was not being able to be with him when he was in hospital because the adoption process was still under way. "We kept in close touch with his social worker and knew how things were going for him, but it still makes me cry to think we couldn't be with him," she says.
It's impossible not to be moved by their story and when you've heard it, it's easy to see why the ground in adoption is shifting, with the reassessment of the role of that magical ingredient "chemistry" which for years rang alarm bells for professionals. "The worry was that the heart would rule the head and there are times when that can't be allowed to happen," says Bridget Betts. "But it's becoming accepted that there has to be a bonding and that we should perhaps look again at the way we've been doing things."
Under the usual protocol for adoption in Britain, prospective adopters "choose" a child from a written description and then embark on a process that involves meetings with social workers and attendance at a "matching panel" at which their suitability for the child is decided on. Only after all this, and at what is essentially the 11th hour before the child comes to live with them, do the adopters get the chance to finally meet "their" child at his or her foster home. The child, meanwhile, will have been informed a few days earlier, by his or her foster parents, that a "forever family" has been found, and will be coming to visit soon. It's all a bit like an arranged marriage with stratospherically high stakes. Bridget (who was herself adopted as a child) agrees that it's hard to imagine how terrifying it must be, for both the adoptive parents and, if he or she is old enough, the child, to walk into a room where they will meet their mother/father/child for the first time. Set against the stress of that, the atmosphere at an adoption activity day sounds positively laid-back. "We have the children at the front of our minds and we aim to make it a really fun occasion for them," says Bridget.
Comparisons are not easy to come by but children featured in Be My Parent, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering's online magazine, which publishes profiles of potential adoptees, have a success rate of around 14%. And in Massachussetts, where adoption parties are the main method through which all kids are adopted, the party success rate is 30% compared with 14% through other methods. Set against those figures, the 20% success rate of Bridget Betts' adoption parties looks good. Depending on whether they are old enough to understand, the children's foster parents will have explained a bit of what the day is about, being careful to put the emphasis on the fun in store and making it clear to the children that, whatever happens, they will go home with their foster parents that night. Experience has taught Bridget that the children tend to enjoy the events a great deal for some, there is the realisation, sometimes for the first time in their lives, that there are other children in the same situation. The people who experience most difficulty at the parties are the adult guests: the prospective adopters (who often wish they could take all the children home with them, so moved are they by their stories) and, especially, the foster parents, who can sometimes feel hurt and even angry that "their" children are being overlooked by potential adopters. No one has felt that more than Katy, who has attended three adoption activity days with her foster sons Connor, seven, and Daniel, five. The boys have lived with Katy, 45, and her husband Paddy for the last two years, and it's clear that the couple dote on them. "They are loving, warm, affectionate, delightful little boys," she says. "They are part of our family and we love them, but we can't be their forever parents."
Katy spent more than 20 years as a social worker before giving it up because she felt she could make more of a difference as a foster mother. She sees her role as getting children like Connor and Daniel through the traumatic period between leaving their birth families and being adopted. But, delightful as the boys are, they unfortunately fit into all the categories that make children "difficult to place". They are boys (girls are more popular), they are over three and they are a sibling group. An adoption party seemed a perfect idea, but Katy had her worries. "You have all these thoughts about how it was in Victorian orphanages where they lined the children up and people strolled along the lines choosing the ones they liked the look of," she says.
For the boys' sake, she agreed to take them but found the experience emotionally shattering. "It was very loud, there were lots of people there and towards the end of the party I realised that no one had come anywhere near the boys. I got very upset. I just wanted to wrap them up in my arms and take them home. I can't understand why no one comes forward for them they are gorgeous kids. People worry that children in care are going to be too damaged or challenging, but Connor and Daniel are nothing like that they are just two lovely little boys. None of my friends can believe they've not been adopted."
Katy felt bruised by the experience, but fostering means putting the kids before yourself, time after time. "The fact is that we're in the last chance saloon for Connor and Daniel, and they deserve a forever family," she says.
So she took them to another adoption activity day and, this time, two couples one in particular showed a lot of interest in them. "It was really brilliant. I thought something would definitely come of it," says Katy.
But it didn't. "Finding out the couple were not going to pursue adopting the boys was heartbreaking," she says.
There has since been a third party, but no follow-ups. It saddens Katy, but she has no regrets. "You're always weighing up the balance between protecting the children and trying to find a family," she says.
"However uncomfortable it made me feel, what it represented was a chance for Connor and Daniel, and that was a chance worth taking. We've got to take some risks for these kids because there's such a lot at stake and they absolutely deserve what we're trying to find for them."
Meanwhile Bridget Betts has no doubts at all. "It's hard, and in a perfect world there wouldn't be a need for any of this because no child would be in need of a family," she says. "But it's not a perfect world. Lots of children have found new parents through adoption activity days and to my mind they would all have been worth it just for one child, just for Thomas, because his whole world has changed for ever because of that day."
