Family fortunes
The ‘adoption parties’ helping children to find homes
Four-year-old Clayton possesses the most wonderful laugh. It spreads from his toothy grin right across his whole, wide, sunny face as he introduces his three siblings – Demi, six, Finley two, and Freddie, nine months. “Clayton is naughty and silly,” Demi then pronounces. “No, I aren’t,” he tells her with another huge, mischievous chuckle.
The four of them are part of a group of 10 children who have come along to a jungle-themed party at a gym in the Midlands. The thought of dressing-up in animal costumes and face-painting is what has got them so excited. Clayton is particularly proud of his bright orange T-shirt with an elephant on the front.
But this is no ordinary party, as they also all know somewhere in the back of their minds. Social workers are working to find all 10 of them adoptive families, and it has been patiently and carefully explained to them by their foster carers that they are going to meet some adults at the party who might – just might – become their “forever families”.
This Adoption Activity Day – filmed for the first part of Channel 4’s
Finding Me a Family, which starts tonight – is one of a series run by the children’s charity Coram nationwide. It is a new – and sometimes controversial – way of introducing prospective adopters and adoptees.
Over 400 children come to such parties over the course of the year. Often, they will be harder to place – because they are part of a family group who want to stay together, or because they are older than what most prospective adopters typically want. Yet such events have proved highly successful. One in four of those children find their new parents there.
“I adopted my son and daughter three years ago,” says Stephen Williams*, one of the programme’s production team. “They were 18 months and four when they came to us, but we did it in what remains the regular way. After we had been approved as adopters, we were sent written profiles and photographs of children to look through, and then there were meetings and panels. We only finally met our children two weeks before they came to live with us.”
The Adoption Activity Day shakes up that process. Had they been invited to one at the time, Williams says without hesitation, he and his partner would have “jumped” at it. “Why? Because you want to be in a room with these children. It makes it easier to feel the chemistry with them.” Instead, they made “the biggest decision in their life” largely on the basis of “pieces of paper and photographs. Half of the children don’t even look like their photos. They don’t look happy, or they don’t look at their best, or the picture is all too staged. But if you had the chance to spend half an hour with them, you might just think, ‘Wow! That’s what a four-year-old is about…’ and after that no longer only want to adopt a baby, as many couples do.”
But these “adoption parties” have attracted criticism. The idea was imported from the United States six years ago as part of a drive to tackle a shortage of adopters. There are now twice as many children looking for “forever families” in this country as people coming forward to adopt.
Some initially labelled the activity days “beauty pageants”, and some local authorities still won’t have anything to do with them. “Because I had never been to one before I started making this programme,” admits Williams, “I was slightly concerned about what it was going to be like, how much the children were going to know or understand. But when I went to one – and, as a production team, we’ve been along as volunteers to almost every one that has been held in the last year – we saw that for the kids, it’s just a big party, and most kids love a party.”
The adopters, though, look much more apprehensive when they arrive at the venue. There are 13 adults, some of them in couples, some on their own. They have been approved as prospective adopters. One of them, Sharon, explains that she isn’t quite sure what to expect. “It makes you think of kids lining up in the Fifties and the one with the shiniest hair being chosen.” By the end of the day, though, she and her husband Chris know differently. They have struck up quite a bond with six-year-old Lewis. As they leave, they are simply asked by the Coram team if they would like to talk further about any of the children they have met. There is no pressure. Meeting Lewis face-to-face prompts Sharon and Chris to rethink what sort of child they want to adopt.
Among the other prospective adopters at the party are Mark and Jo, who have six older children of their own at their large, happy home. They are unusual in being willing to consider taking on an entire family group. “If we’ve got it to offer,” says Mark, “why can’t we offer that to some children who need it?”
As the day progresses, Mark and Jo spend time with Clayton and his brothers and sister. Eventually, and regretfully, they decide that taking on another four children would be too much for them. It is, as the children’s social worker admits, such a big ask, and may indeed be too much for any adoptive parents. The four siblings may have to be split up.
Finding Me a Family, Williams insists, is not about promoting a quick-fix to the challenges in our adoption system, which each year works with around 2,000 youngsters needing homes and families, but rather about showing couples and individuals what can be the rewards. “There’s always that genetic thing when you talk about having a family – the idea of passing on your genes,” he says. “But the reality of it is that, even if I was blood-related to my kids, I don’t know if I could love them any more than I do. They are my children.”
*Some names and details have been changed
Finding Me a Family starts tonight on
Channel 4 at 9pm