Like many, myself and my wife Ann came to adoption after experiencing failed fertility treatment and for us this included a miscarriage. Our adoption journey began in 2018 when we made our initial call to the armed forces charity SSAFA.

We went to approval panel in September 2019, paused while we moved house, and were linked with a child just before the pandemic hit.

Thankfully, we went to matching panel and introductions took place a week later in June 2020.

Bringing D home during various lockdowns and restrictions was definitely something we could never have expected and certainly made our experience as first-time parents more isolating as we were not able to lean on our support network as we’d expected to.

Thankfully the online adoption community is amazing and has been a huge support to us.

Our little girl’s adoption order was granted in December 2020 - the perfect early Christmas present. We’ve faced sleepless nights ever since but my word she is worth it!

I run Adoption UK’s LGBTQ+ group which was set up in November of 2020 and we meet virtually every second Wednesday of the month at 8pm. We get together for an hour and discuss whatever people on the call want to cover. To date we have talked about introductions, letterbox contact, school advocacy, how to meet other adopters for growing support networks and more.

I am so passionate about the group. Facilitating such a supportive environment for other adopters is important to me because, having adopted during Covid, I really felt the effect of not being able to build in person relationships with other parents. I also wanted to broaden links for LGBTQ+ adopters across the country. The adoption community is unique and special and I am so proud to be a part of it.

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