We decided to go through our local social services for the adoption but there are several organisations you can approach for adopting a child. So, in order to better understand, I also contacted the adoption charity recommended by my husband’s colleague.

The charity explained that you can only register for adoption with one organisation and obviously, we as a couple need to decide which one.

The way how it seems to work is as follows, each local social services department is in charge of the children who are looking for an adoptive home in their geographical area and they will match the children with the families from the respective geographical area who are looking to adopt a child. This means that other organisations can only place adoptive children who have not found adoptive parents in their geographical area. Therefore, these organisations work on a national basis. This has a major consequence as explained by the local catholic charity who made me aware that as a result of this, as adoptive parents, you need to be prepared to adopt a child between 0 and 5 years. We decided not to take it forward as we rather prefer to adopt a childe of 3 years and younger.