Are adoption parties the best way to help children find their 'forever family'?

Four-year-old Clayton possesses the most wonderful laugh. It spreads from his toothy grin right across his whole, wide, sunny face as he introduces his three siblings – Demi, 6, Finley 2, and Freddie, 9 months. “Clayton is naughty and silly,” Demi pronounces. “No, I aren’t,” he tells her with another huge, mischievous chuckle.

The four of them are part of a group of 10 children who have come along to a jungle-themed party at a gym in the Midlands. The thought of all that dressing-up in animal costumes and face-painting is what has got them so excited. Clayton is particularly proud of his bright orange T-shirt with an elephant on the front.

But this is no ordinary party, as they also all know somewhere in the back of their minds. Social workers are working to find all 10 of them adoptive families, and it has been patiently and carefully explained to them by their foster carers that they are going to meet some adults at the party who might – just might – become their “forever families”.

This Adoption Activity Day – filmed for the first part of Channel 4’s, Finding Me A Family, broadcast tonight – is one of a series run by the children’s charity Coram in different parts of the country. It is a new – and sometimes controversial – way of introducing prospective adopters and adoptees.

Over 400 children come to such parties over the course of the year. Often, they will be harder to place – because they are part of a family group who want to stay together, or because they are older than what most prospective adopters typically want. Yet such open days have proved highly successful. One in four of those children who attend find their new parents there.

“I adopted my son and daughter three years ago,” says Stephen Williams, one of the production team on the programme. “They were 18 months and four when they came to us, but we did it in what remains the regular way. After we had been approved as adopters, we were sent written profiles and photographs of children to look through, and then there were meetings and panels. We only finally met our children two weeks before they came to live with us.”

The Adoption Activity Day shakes up that process. Had they been invited to one at the time, Williams says without hesitation, he and his partner would have “jumped” at it. “Why? Because you want to be in a room with these children. It makes it easier to feel the chemistry with them.”

Instead, they made what he says was “the biggest decision in their life” largely on the basis of “pieces of paper and photographs. Half of the children don’t even look like their photos. They don’t look happy, or they don’t look at their best, or the picture is all too staged. But if you had the chance to spend half an hour with them, you might just think, ‘Wow! That’s what a four-year-old is about…’, and after that no longer only want to adopt a baby, as many couples do.”

But these “adoption parties” have attracted criticism. The idea was imported from the United States six years ago as part of a drive to tackle a shortage of adopters. There are now twice as many children looking for “forever families” in this country as there are people coming forward to adopt.

Some initially labeled the activity days the equivalent of “beauty pageants”, where children were lined up and displayed to prospective adopters. And some local authorities still won’t have anything to do with them.

“Because I had never been to one before I started making this programme,” admits Williams, “I was slightly concerned about what it was going to be like, how much the children were going to know or understand. But when I went to one – and, as a production team, we’ve been along as volunteers to almost everyone that has been held in the last year – we saw that for the kids, it’s just a big party, and most kids love a party.”

The adopters, though, look much more apprehensive when they arrive at the venue. There are 13 adults, some of them in couples, some on their own. They have been approved by their local authority as prospective adopters.

Sharon explains that she isn’t quite sure what to expect. “It makes you think of kids lining up in the 1950s and the one with the shiniest hair being chosen.”

By the end of the day, though, she and her husband Chris know differently. They have struck up quite a bond with six-year-old Lewis. As they leave, they are simply asked by the Coram team if they would like to talk further about any of the children they have met. There is no pressure. This is neither a short cut, nor does it encourage spur-of-the-moment choices.

Meeting Lewis face-to-face prompts Sharon and Chris to rethink what sort of child they want to adopt. They had been looking for a younger girl, but go ahead with him instead.

Among the other prospective adopters at the party are Mark and Jo, who have six older children of their own at their large, happy home. They are unusual in being willing to consider taking on an entire family group. “If we’ve got it to offer,” says plain-talking Mark, “why can’t we offer that to some children who need it?”

As the day progresses, Mark and Jo spend time with Clayton and his brothers and sister. You start to hope for a happy ending as the camera catches the chemistry between them. Nothing is said to the children, but the couple head home to think over what would be a huge and daunting upheaval in their lives. Eventually, and regretfully, they decide that taking on another four children would be too much for them.

It is, as the children’s social worker admits, such a big ask, and may indeed be too much for any adoptive parents. The four siblings may have to be split up so as to find them homes and families.

“I started off,” Stephen Williams reflects, “thinking the heart and soul of the programme would be the adopters – and the adopters we feature are amazing. But, for me, the heart and soul really is the social workers and foster workers.”

Clayton, Demi, Finley and Freddie are living with a foster carer who took them into her home at 15 minutes’ notice after they were removed from their birth parents because they were being neglected. Over the years, it emerges, this extraordinary woman has provided a loving home for more than 50 children.

“Sometimes, social workers don’t get a good press, and you hear people saying foster carers do it for the money they are paid,” says Williams. “But I hope in the film it is their passion that comes across, how much they love these kids, and how much they want to get it right for them.”

Finding Me A Family, he insists, is not about promoting a quick-fix to the challenges in our adoption system, which each year works with around 2,000 youngsters needing homes and families, but rather about showing couples and individuals what can be the rewards. “There’s always that genetic thing when you talk about having a family – the idea of passing on your genes. But the reality of it is that, even if I was blood-related to my kids, I don’t know if I could love them any more than I do. They are my children.”

He still remembers the first night his boy and girl slept under his roof. “We just kept creeping into their room and looking at them. They must have been terrified but they slept amazingly. Yes, of course, it is daunting. You keep wondering, am I getting this right because they’ve been through a lot?

"At the beginning, you have to keep telling them: ‘You’re going to stay here forever.’ And six months later, they’d still be asking: ‘So, are we going back?’ They don’t ask any more.”

Finding Me A Family is on Channel on Tuesdays, 9pm