Step 1: Make the initial enquiry
Firstly you need to get in touch with your local council adoption department, or a voluntary adoption agency. If you want a contact number, for your area, click this link Adoption and Fostering agencies and search our database of adoption and fostering agencies.

Step 2: Information meeting
After your initial enquiry you may be sent an information pack in the post or asked to an information meeting. These meetings are designed to give you information with a chance for you to ask questions. Often adoptive parents, who can give 'hands on' answers, will attend these meetings.

Step 3: The first visit
The social worker will arrange a suitable time to visit you at your home. At this meeting you will have more in-depth discussions on why you want to adopt and what you can offer a child, and the kind of children available for adoption. This is also an opportunity to discuss more personal issues and how the process will work.

Step 4: Health and CRB checks and preparation
If you decide to proceed with your wish to adopt, you will be asked to take part in preparation, often by attending group meetings, and you will give permission for checks to be made by the Criminal Records Bureau .These checks are routine and nothing to worry about. It's essential that social services ensure the safety of the children by checking the potential adoption parents have no criminal convictions or cautions for serious offences against children or vulnerable adults. You will also be asked to provide information about your health from your GP, who may require you to be medically examined.

Step 5: The application form and assessment
If the agency considers, when it has the health and CRB information and you have taken part in preparation, that you may be suitable to adopt a child, you will be give the application form to complete and then your assessment will begin.

This is the big one!

You will be given very detailed information about adoption and how it will change your lives. You will have to think very hard at this point if you can commit to adopting the child.

Do you think that you could cope with a child with disabilities or one that has behavioural problems? All these type of searching questions will be asked in addition to explanations about adoption law and what rights etc birth parents.

The social worker will make several visits to your home, known as home study. This will allow the social worker to build a profile of you. If you live with a partner you will be interviewed both individually and as a couple.

This part can feel a little intrusive. There will be detailed questions about your past and your family. Three references will be required, including one from a family member. All three must be interviewed by the social worker - what they say about you will not be revealed to you without your referee's permission.

This is a lifetime commitment so all these checks are necessary to ensure you are able to take a child into your lives.

Step 6: Report following the home study - the Prospective Adopters Report [also known as Form F]
After the home study has been completed both you and your social worker will put together this report. This will contain all the information gathered during the home study. You are entitled to see most of what is in the report [except the references and health report] at least 10 working days before the adoption panel and will have the opportunity to comment on what is written.

Step 7: Adoption panel
Once it is completed and your comments [if any] added, the report goes forward to an adoption panel. This panel is made up of social workers and other professionals and people with personal experience of adoption .You must be invited to attend the panel but you are not obliged to do so, but either way your social worker would attend the panel. The panel then makes a recommendation to the agency as to whether you are suitable to adopt a child or not. The agency then makes its decision.

Step 8: Matching a child
After you have been approved your social worker will begin to look for a suitable child. The search usually starts locally but may spread to other authorities in the country. The now-approved adopter can also start to investigate this by looking at profiles of children. One option here is to look at the Adoption-net profiles section.

Step 9: Placement
Once a suitable child has been found you will be given full details including the child's background and why the child is available for adoption. This information is contained in the Child's Permanence Report.

If you are willing to proceed, and the child's social worker thinks you are suitable for the child, you must be given, at least 10 working days before the Adoption Panel meets to consider the match, a copy of the Adoption Placement Report - providing details of the proposals [if any] for support for you and the child and contact between the child and the birth family.

If the panel recommends the match and the agency then approves it, and if you are happy, then plans will be made to introduce you to the child and place him or her with you. The details of the introductory arrangements, date proposed for placement to happen, contact and support arrangements etc., will be set out in writing in the Adoption Placement Plan.

Introduction often starts with a short visit followed by longer visits. You also may be able to take the child out for a period of time.

After this initial period the child will come to live with you and be a real part of your family.

Step 10: Final stage - the adoption order

Once the child has lived with you for at least 10 weeks and if s/he is settled and all are happy, you can apply to the court for an adoption order. After this order is made ALL legal parental responsibility for that child becomes yours. The child's birth certificate is replaced by an adoption certificate.

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