Will and Steph

Will and his wife, Steph, have adopted two children with Adoption Counts. They were approved for early permanence and both of their children are of a different ethnicity from theirs.

Will told us about his journey to becoming a family.

“My wife and I were together for about 12 years before we started thinking about children. Steph has an inherited genetic condition and while there were some options available to us via IVF to reduce the risk of it being passed on, we didn’t feel that this was the right way for us to become a family.

Instead we contacted Adoption Counts through our local council and asked some more questions about adoption and what it would mean for us.

Starting the process

The adoption process took a while for us, but partly because it took place during the first Covid-19 lockdown, then we decided to take a six month break in between phases while Steph started a new job.

We’re both teachers and although we felt we knew children on one level, we still learnt a lot as part of the training. We also learnt about fostering for adoption and signed ourselves up for that.

Once we’d been through the stages and approved at panel we were actually matched with our son very quickly. He came to us via the traditional adoption route in the end rather than fostering first, but we’re glad we’d given ourselves both options.

Adopting a child with a different ethnicity

When we did our training, we learnt more about interracial adoptions and also that children of Black or mixed heritage tend to wait longer to be adopted. At the school where I work, I’ve done quite a bit to update our curriculum so it better represents the pupils we teach, so I had a bit of an understanding about how important recognising diversity is.

Our social worker was of a different ethnicity from us, and she talked to us about it too, and it felt natural for us to put down that we would be happy to have a child with a different ethnic background to our own. We didn’t actively seek it out, but we decided that we wouldn't put any limitations on it either. Instead, it was important to us that we had a younger child, so we wanted a child under two, but apart from that we were quite open.

Meeting Elijah

We were lucky to be matched with Elijah quite quickly. Seeing the first picture of him was just incredible. I will admit that it was scary when he first came to live with us after our transition period with the foster carers. We felt a lot of pressure as you wanted things to be right for him but, within a couple of days, he felt like he’d always been with us. Already we couldn’t imagine our lives without him in our family.

He had only just turned one when he came to us. And I remember so clearly in the winter after he was with us, we’d had a lot of snow and he’d just started walking. And he was sat in the snow in a snow suit, and in my wife’s arms and they were throwing snow out of their hands together. Making memories like that was just magical.

“He was sat in the snow in a snow suit, and in my wife’s arms and they were throwing snow out of their hands together.

Making memories like that was just magical.”

– Will and Steph

Adopting a second child

When it came to adopting again it was really quick and easy. We had the same social worker, and we did stage one and stage two of the process concurrently, and once again we were matched quickly. We knew that we wanted a sibling for Elijah who also had a mixed heritage, and again a younger child.

As we had been approved to foster for adoption we were offered the chance to foster our daughter once she was just a few weeks old. For various reasons this didn’t end up happening, but instead she came to us when she was just six months.

Now we have both Lexi and Elijah we feel like our family is complete. Our family feels so special as it’s one we’ve made by bringing individuals together to make a family unit. I think as long as you’re prepared that there might be challenges along the way, then perhaps the relationship you build with an adopted child is stronger than with a birth child as you can’t take anything for granted. We’ve worked hard at the relationships with our children, and I can’t think of a more rewarding way to build a family.

A supported future

We’ve stayed in touch with both of our children’s foster carers and they feel like extended family now. We also know that we could get in touch and ask them for help if we needed to, and because they looked after our children as babies, they know them so well.

We also access the support from Adoption Counts, such as the therapeutic play sessions, and we regularly attend the global majority support group. It’s been beneficial to meet other adopters at every stage of the process.

Our house and our lives feel so full now. We have two children, two dogs and so much happiness in our lives. We feel really lucky to have an incredible network around us and two amazing children at the centre of it.”