Once this assessment is complete, the report is presented to an Adoption Panel.

If your application reaches the stage of going before an adoption panel, the chances are it will succeed - only about six per cent fail at this stage.

Adoption panels are, in theory, an independent body although the panel is organised by the adoption agency and the head of the panel is quite often the director of the adoption agency.

By law there have to be a number of outside members of the panel including a doctor, a councillor and at least three lay members, who may include people who have adopted themselves.

The panel can only make recommendations to an agency about whether or not someone should be approved and what sort of children they should approved to adopt. It is then the agency that has the responsibility for making the final decisions.

It is rare for a panel to recommend that an applicant be refused because usually unsuccessful applicants will be screened out of the process earlier.

The panels usually meet every two months and will spend up about half an hour considering each application. The applicant will normally know the panel's recommendations within two weeks and possibly on the day.

In the past prospective adopters were not invited to the panel hearing but now many authorities have changed their policy to allow applicants to attend the meeting so that they can be given an opportunity to contribute.

A new Human Rights Act due to come into force later this year is likely to give more rights to applicants to attend the panel hearings.

In the rare event that an application is refused, there is little in terms of legal redress for an applicant. You could take the issue to the social services committee of the local authority and maybe to the local government ombudsman.

If you are approved, the next stage in the procedure is finding the right child to adopt.

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