FAQ
Delivering high quality adoption services for 90 years
Call: 0800 652 6955
We get asked lots of questions from people who are considering adoption.
Here are some of our Adoption Social Workers to answer some of the most common ones.
If the answer to your question is not covered on this page, click here to send us a message and we will get back to you. Alternatively, you can call us on 0800 652 6955 Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.
Many people thinking about adoption have no parenting experience but we are here to work with you to identify what experiences you have from other areas of your life that are relevant, for example. if you have worked with children or done voluntary work.
You’ll be surprised at how relevant these experiences can be. If you do not have any previous child care experience it would greatly strengthen your application to seek this through baby sitting/caring for the children of relatives or friends or through voluntary work e.g. at schools or nurseries/beavers, rainbows etc.
Many people thinking about adoption have no parenting experience but we are here to work with you to identify what experiences you have from other areas of your life that are relevant, for example. if you have worked with children or done voluntary work.
You’ll be surprised at how relevant these experiences can be. If you do not have any previous child care experience it would greatly strengthen your application to seek this through baby sitting/caring for the children of relatives or friends or through voluntary work e.g. at schools or nurseries/beavers, rainbows etc.
These are children who can’t be safely looked after by their birth families.
Children waiting to be adopted range in age, but are generally over 3, from a range of cultural backgrounds, and many are in sibling groups. These children can have a variety of additional needs, but what they need most of all is a loving, stable and secure family in which they can meet their potential.
We are keen to speak to families/individuals who would consider adoption in particular for:
Children who are over 4 years
Brothers and Sisters
Children with additional needs, such as a disability or educational needs
Children from different faiths, cultures and backgrounds
Yes, you can…
We always try wherever possible to place children with adoptive families that share their ethnic and religious background.
However, sadly this is not always possible and so it is then important to ensure that a family can encourage, promote, celebrate and understand the importance of a child’s religious, cultural and ethnic identity influences.
It is important to remember that all children, and especially those that are waiting to be adopted, are individual and unique and regardless of their history, our aim in finding adopters for them is so that they are given the opportunity to be the very best version of themselves, that they can be.
If you have any questions about adopting, please feel free to give us a call on 0800 652 6955 or click on the link.
Every prospective adopter has a full medical as part of the adoption process, regardless of their health.
As part of this we would consider the nature of your health and mental health in addition to the impact on you and your ability to parent.
Every case is looked at individually by our agency medical adviser to determine your capacity to meet a child’s needs in to adulthood.
We’ll work with you from the very early stages of the process to ascertain whether adoption is right for you.
Yes you can! We very much welcome LGBTQ+ adopters.
Our focus is to find loving and stable families for children, regardless of people’s sexual orientation.
We have many people in same sex relationships who have chosen our service and gone on to successfully adopt children with the support of our agency.
We are members of New Family Social and of Proud2beParents, so you know you will be well-supported by.
Yes you can…if you don’t own your own home you can still adopt.
This is because children need a safe and secure base and as long as you provide that you can become an adoptive parent.
Of course… We welcome single adopters, in fact, we have a thriving peer support group for our single adopters here at Caritas Care.
Our single Adopters have had many successful placements – many children really thrive on the one to one attention.
However, if you start a relationship we would expect to involve your partner in the process.
Many people ask this question and every adoption agency has the same approach. If you or any member of your household smokes, you will not be able to adopt a child under 5 years of age, as it is recognised smoking can have a particularly damaging effect on young children’s health.
If you have previously smoked and wish to adopt a younger child, then you must have stopped smoking or using e-cigarettes/vaping for at least six months prior to commencing the assessment process. We will ask you to provide evidence of this.
We will support you through this by keeping in touch and walking you through it until you’re able to start the process. We can provide you will fuller details of our smoking/vaping policy and assistance available if that would be helpful.
This does not stop you from attending any of our information events and finding out more about adoption. We’re here to help you.
If you have any questions about adopting, please feel free to give us a call on 0800 652 6955 or click on the link.
Yes you do… this is because the child needs their own space, somewhere they can call their own. This will promote a sense of being valued and being part of your family.
A child needs to find their own place in the family and children in the family can take time to settle down.
Yes you can…this is a wonderful way to create your future family.
We understand that the process can be emotional and it is important that you are able to prioritise adoption as the way to becoming parents.
If you have had or are undergoing fertility treatment we would want you to complete this treatment before applying to adopt.
We will discuss your individual circumstances with you.
Yes you can…this is a wonderful way to create your future family.
A Voluntary Adoption Agency is an independent charity or agency who is independent from the state and are non-profit making in structure. This means that we are not bound to our local area when it comes to matching. We seek to match families from all four corners of the country, so we can be sure to find the right fit for you and the child/children looking for their forever family.
97% of Voluntary Adoption Agencies have been rated highly or very highly by Ofsted and place around 25% of the children adopted each year.
Caritas Care is rated Outstanding in ALL areas and has been since 2015.
Yes you can, although we would want to discuss your long term plans for returning to work after adoption leave.
As an employee you are entitled to adoption leave and it is expected that you will time off work to help your child settle in.
Returning to work on a either a full or part time basis will not prevent you from adopting, though depending on the age and needs of your child, you may need some flexibility in terms of your working week to ensure that you can provide consistency and stability for your child.
You can adopt if you are over 21 and there is no legal upper age limit for adopters.
We look at everybody’s circumstances on an individual basis. When placing children we need to be confident that you have the energy and life expectancy to care for the child/ren throughout their childhood and into early adulthood.
We will explore with you the age of the child/ren that you are able to consider and your combined age (if applying as a couple) will help us to determine together the age of the child that would best suit you.
There a certain criminal convictions that would prevent you from adopting, these are serious offences that relate to vulnerable adults or children.
We are not here to judge you, but it is important that you are honest with us from the start as we will need to talk to you about any offences at an early stage in the process.
Being divorced/separated or having remarried does not prevent you from adopting. As part of your assessment we would need to contact ex-partners from any significant previous relationship regardless of whether you were married or not; unless there is very good reason not to do so. This is particularly pertinent where you have parented children together and we will talk to you more about this during the process
No, each family is assessed individually, and as part of this we will assess your capacity to meet the needs of all the children in the family, in addition to an adopted child or children. We would also want to include your children in the process of becoming an adoptive family
We usually recommend a two-year age gap between any birth and/or adopted children. However, sometimes we are approached by Local Authorities to inform us that a sibling has been born to a child that we have already placed in one of our adoptive families. In such circumstances we would consider the needs of placing siblings together as the priority regardless of the age difference.
Each prospective adopter undergoes a full medical as part of the adoption process, regardless of their health. As part of this we would consider the nature of your disability and the extent to which this impacts on you and your ability to parent. Each case is looked at individually by the agency medical adviser to determine your capacity to meet a child’s needs in to adulthood. We’ll work with you from the very early stages of the process to ascertain whether adoption is right for you.
We expect adopters to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle for both themselves and any child placed with them, and consider it is important that adopters model such lifestyles for children. Every adopter has to undergo a medical as part of the adoption process; an individuals weight is one aspect which will be looked at in the context of an individuals overall health and well being. We would be very happy to provide prospective adopters with advice and support in relation to this issue.
It is ok to have some debt, but we do ask that applicants are financially secure. This means that you are managing your finances and if you have debt, can evidence that you are managing and reducing this. As part of the process we will ask you to complete a budget planner to evidence that you are managing your finances and are able to provide for a child.
There are no rules about age gaps between applicants; all relationships are looked at individually and the strengths and vulnerabilities of each individual relationship are identified.
I have heard that there is a maximum gap between the age of the child and my age for me to be able to adopt. Is this true?
There is no maximum age gap between the age of the child and an adopter. We do, however, look at each case individually to assess the likelihood of an applicant being able to meet the child’s needs throughout childhood and beyond, which might, depending on your age, mean we ask you to consider older children.
At Caritas Care we are working hard to place children aged 4 and over, sibling groups and children with an extra dimension of need. We like to approach family finding in a thorough and reflective way and find that achieving the right match for our adopters takes, on average, about 6 months. Of course, it is impossible to be definite about something that is so unique for every family – sometimes it will take longer to achieve the right match and sometimes matching happens more quickly.
Our advice is that you keep an open mind about the type of child you would consider, as this might help to reduce waiting times. Please see our page on Children Waiting to give you some perspective on the children we are prioritising right now; these are the children who often wait longer to find their adoptive family.