A New Role

I am exceptionally excited to have been offered and accepted the position of Adopter Voice Champion with Adoption UK for the Lincolnshire area.

I am hoping that in this position I can interact with more adoptive parents (face to face and online), understand the issues that they face and hopefully work with the charity to push forward improvements for parents who had already adopted and those who will adopt in the future. In all this I want to make the lives of children better - even if my work only helps a single child it will be worth the effort.

The adoption process has already improved dramatically since we went through it - the reports are more streamlined and the courses are interspersed with the formal training days. The panels are smaller and, I hope, less daunting but whilst all these improvements for parents are in place the emphasis is still on the children and making sure that they are safe and with the right parents at the end of the day. All the media attention of the issues have to help and with any luck the right steps are being taken.

There is a lot in the system to support children who have backgrounds and histories that include the care system. Pupil premium plus, an allowance that schools can request, is available for all these children but it is stills with the school as to how they want to spend it. Many younger children are benefitting from the 2 year old funding for pre school provisions - I know that my daughter did and that her being in a pre school allowed me to have more one to one time with my son and thus benefitted him as well. Post adoption support is something that I am struggling to work with at the moment, it is not as good as I was expecting it to be.


I have already been to meet some of the Lincolnshire team, we didn't adopt through this agency and so they are all new faces to me and I was encouraged by how positive they were about the improvements that this process could bring and I am waiting to find out when the first face to face forums will take.  


This weekend I am off on my first training day and I can't wait.