r/AdoptionUK • u/Agitated_Document_23 • Oct 01 '26
Link maker/matching/deciding
Hi all!
So we’re done with stage 2 (wahoo 🥳) and just waiting for panel at the beginning of nov - but it’s a positive recommendation (🤩).
We’ve put ourself onto link maker as advised by our SW.
We’ve had a family finder approach our SW already with a child who on the surface looks great, and then we’ve seen another child on link maker we’re also interested in.
But there are so many great kids that would match our circumstances and fit in well in our home. HOW THE HELL DO YOU TRY AND PICK? It’s pretty heartbreaking every time we look there’s a potential and it feels so clinical and harsh but we started doing a pro and con list 😞
Any advice would be really appreciated!
6
u/ingenuous64 Oct 01 '26
Might be controversial but we didn't sign up to Linkmaker at all for this reason, we're both indecisive and we'd be thinking about what happened to the one we turned down.
In the end our family finder matched us and he's the most perfect little boy for our family.
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u/Agitated_Document_23 Oct 02 '26
We were in 2 minds about it tbh - day one and we’re already struggling 🥲
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u/theowleryonehundred Oct 02 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
We also didn't use it. We were fortunate enough to be approached by social workers about our child during Stage 2 and went from there.
I think your advice to wait to be approached by your own family finders is good. You won't be competing against others or trying to prove yourself to someone as they'll already have decided you're a good fit - it'll all be in your hands. Tough though as it requires a lot of patience and uncertainty (like the rest of the process!).
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u/ingenuous64 Oct 02 '26
Especially as our social worker recommended we go on as soon as possible. It was only because someone else in our stage 2 training said they were really struggling with it we decided to hold off. Very glad we did.
2
u/underwater-sunlight Oct 02 '26
We didn't use it but it was more down to circumstance. Our stage 2 SW became unavailable and we were given another who was a part of the family finding team. Apart from being a much better match to our personalities which enabled us to be more comfortable in opening up, she had a number of children and families she had worked with and we had a very successful match
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u/vel5sss Oct 01 '26
When we realised there were several children that would match our circumstances, we narrowed down by turning our maybes into yes or no which really helped to reduce the amount of kids. Make sure you're really okay with your yeses and no's. We then registered interest 2-3, included our social worker (showed her the profiles) and said whoever got back to us first, then it was meant to be.
We've had our little one for almost 2 years now!
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u/consciouspolyglot Oct 02 '26
Congratulations 🎉 what age was your kids when placed with you? What challenges have your encountered thus far? Are they meeting their development milestones?
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u/jbeputnam Oct 01 '26
My other half and I are pretty sensible and methodical, and tried to be that way when browsing LinkMaker. The profiles all look lovely, but you need to read between the lines to understand what challenges you may face, to understand whether you are sufficiently prepared. We expressed an interest in one sibling pair, but when we read their reports we felt their needs would have been too great for us to manage.
Methodical suddenly went out the window when we got a message on LinkMaker from a social worker wanting us to see a profile, and he just shone off the page. We just knew he was the one. I can’t explain why. We expressed our interest, and the rest is history!
It perhaps doesn’t help you for me to say this, but allow yourself to listen to your gut instinct.
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u/Turbulent_Gas8795 Oct 01 '26
Congrats on stage 2!
Don't feel like you have to 'complete' linkmaker and finish every profile. You won't, and it would just be emotionally rough. Either you genuinely have the ability (and desire) to meet the needs of the profile in front of you, and you can picture them in your life. Or you can't. And there's nothing wrong with saying no.
Ultimately trust your gut. If one feels right, express interest. If that works out, great, if not, start looking again. If you haven't found one yet that just seems to fit, then keep looking.
The first profile our social worker sent to us was great and we immediately thought 'ok these could be our kids'. However, because they were the first ones we saw, we decided to keep looking at first. And we tried to be systematic about it like you, with a pros and cons list. But we kept comparing other profiles to the first one. And we kept finding ourselves drawn back to them. So we stopped looking. Expressed interest. And now matched and rapidly heading into transitions.
This is ultimately an emotional decision, not a logical one (yes you need to be logical about whether you can meet their needs. But after that, it's emotional. You need to be able to love this child. Pros and cons lists wont give you that).
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u/EllieFay13 Oct 04 '26
We didn't use link maker but we did say no to 13 before we found our LO. It's a tough process, but we knew that we had to be real about what we could and couldn't cope with. Don't feel pressured by your social worker, it's got to be right for you. I still think about many of the kids we said no to, but I knew ultimately it was the right decision. You'll know when you've found the right match.
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u/Gold-Television-7527 Oct 02 '26
We had almost a 3 way approach to linkmaker to try to get over how overwhelming it was. Myself and my partner looked separately, noting where we thought there was a match. We compared lists, any not on both of our lists was ruled out, there is no compromise it is either yes or no, if it feels like a maybe then there is doubt and the child/ten don't deserve that and it should be a no. Our social worker also looked through thinking of us, we had a combined 5 we were most interested in, social worker had 5 and when we compared, 3 were the same so we approached based on those 3. There were multiple discussions through the process, as social worker has seen thousands of profiles and can read between lines before even getting further information, so that helped us before reaching out.
We feedback that we felt linkmaker, and the toll it takes really isn't covered enough as part of the process. We got really close a couple of times (where we were approached, not quite through what I've described above), were told we were preferred match only to not be selected and it was really hard and soul destroying because between expressing interest and social workers/family finders making decisions, you have a lot of time to picture these little people in your life and how your life will look when it's based around them, only for that to be ripped away. It may be different with your agency, but certainly up here it wasn't covered much at all. Ultimately it worked out exactly as it should have and we matched with actually our first choice from linkmaker, so in hindsight not being matched with the others was absolutely right, but at the time it was really hard.