Christina and Stuart Smith are old hands at the adoption process having been through it three times before.

But not all their experierences have been positive so when Christina made that initial phone call to her local social services adoption unit on November 1 last year, it was with a certain amount of scepticism about what lay ahead.

But, as she found out, she needn't have been so cynical...

It was in November that I rang our social services to enquire about the possibility of being assessed.

I was told the social worker I needed to speak to was not available. They took my name and I was told she would return my call.

Having been through the entire adoption process with three local authorities already - we already have four adopted children - I honestly thought 'here we go' and resigned myself to trying again the following day.

But just after lunch the phone rang. A friendly voice said: "Hello I'm Brenda Thomas, an adoption social worker. I'm returning your call, how can I help?"

I explained to her that although we already had four adopted children we felt the time was right to add to our family and were hoping to be assessed for a special needs baby.

We talked for quite a while and Brenda said it would be best if she could come and visit us to discuss it. We arranged a meeting for the following week that fell in with the hours my husband would be at home.

The following week Brenda arrived spot on time. When I opened the door the first thing I noticed was her broad beaming smile.

She was immaculately dressed and looked very business-like but at the same time friendly and approachable. Immediately, both my husband and I felt at ease.

We discussed our family situation and why we wanted to adopt again and what sort of child we felt we could offer the most to.

Brenda told us they definitely wanted us and that they felt we had a lot to offer. She'd send us the application forms, medical consents, and so on very soon.

As we had already attended one of their preparation courses and already adopted four special needs children, she didn't feel we'd benefit from attending another course.

Brenda told us our local authority guarantees to assess you and take you to panel within six months and that she'd be able to start the form F in late January 2001.

Four days later the forms duly arrived and we returned them immediately. Our medical appointments came through for December 6.

Meanwhile we decided a baby with Down's Syndrome would fit in best with our existing children and that we'd be able to offer the kind of loving and stimulating environment such a baby needs.

We joined the Down's Syndrome Association so we could learn as much as we could and also contacted various local organisations that enabled us to talk to parents of children with DS.

Fortunately, I had been a residential social worker with learning disabled adults for almost ten years so was also able to share my knowledge and experiences with my husband and our children.

On January 24 our assessment began and from then, Brenda visited us fortnightly. On the first visit, we told her of our decision about wanting to adopt a Down's Syndrome baby and why we had come to that conclusion.

It turned out she had been thinking along the same lines. She also agreed with us that we should be looking for a very young baby as a more natural way of introducing another child into our family.

I told her I had been a little apprehensive about how the assessment would impact on our children.

Brenda fully appreciated my concerns and could understand that while we wanted them to play an active part, we did not want them 'grilled'. She proposed to set them a project for them to carry out and invited us to discuss with her what we thought would be appropriate.

Although Brenda met them on every visit to our house, we made a special point of letting them know that because they were so important, Brenda would like to spend more time with them and that she would give them something really exciting to do.

On the next visit, Brenda mainly saw them and gave them all the project details. It was brilliant. Our children each had a scrapbook and she asked them individually to describe particular days of the week, family activities and routines.

She also asked them to let her know what they liked and didn't like, what made them special and anything else they thought she should know.

They all worked really hard producing the books with lots of writing and some very good drawings. When they were all finished we all went to B and Q and bought the requisite sticky back plastic and covered them. All of them were as pleased as punch and couldn't wait to show her what they'd done.

The meetings continued at fortnightly intervals and every time there was the same beaming smile as I opened the door.

She was always on time, apart from once, and even then she rang to let us know she might be ten minutes late.

Throughout the entire assessment we felt able to be completely open and honest with her about everything. We felt truly valued and her non-judgemental attitude was totally refreshing. She was able to empathise at times and laugh with us at others. We looked forward to her visits and so did the children.

After the final visit Brenda told us she was hoping to take our application to the panel on April 24 and that she would make sure we had our copy of the F form in plenty of time to give us time to make amendments. It duly arrived on April 3.

It was absolutely super and I e-mailed her to ask if it was really us she was writing about - we sounded too good!

She had attached a compliment slip that told us to scribble all over it, cross out what we didn't like or make any alterations we felt were necessary. The only alteration I made was to my identical twin sister's age being nine years older than me.

On April 24, Brenda rang and told us we'd been approved and that she'd ring in a couple of days to let us know if the decision-maker had agreed with the panel. Two days later she rang to let us know it had all gone through and arranged to see us this morning - April 30.

Brenda also told me that in view of the resource we were offering, they wouldn't be holding us to our local area and that she was immediately referring us both to Baaflink and our regional consortium of adoption agencies.

Brenda arrived on Monday - as usual on time - with the lovely smile and the lively hellos to all the children. We chatted for ages, about how excited we were and how the children had had a countdown going on the blackboard in the kitchen leading up to the panel date.

We discussed how far geographically we would go and all decided the 'wait and see' option would be best. We told her how we felt it was so important our children were fully involved with any introductions and of our concerns about how that could be done.

Brenda told us of how accommodating some agencies had been when she'd been in similar situations before. She also explained the timescales and how the various panels work leading up to introductions.

Any questions that we had, she answered. She said she knew we'd like a baby tomorrow, but not too worry, the right baby would come along and it would be wonderful when it did.

When she left she told us she'd be phoning us from time to time just to see how we all were and, of course, if anything came up we'd be the first to know.

So now we are waiting.

We both felt it was important to tell this story of our wonderful assessment.

We, of all people know how it can go wrong. We have had a pretty rough ride in the past. But when it does go this well it's kind of nice to let everyone know just how good it can be.

Read more about their experiences of adoption