Michael and Paul are adoptive parents to four children – two sets of twins - Levi & Lucas who are 15 and Lotan and Lance who are 4. As disability advocates they work hard to raise awareness throughout the UK on autism, epilepsy and accessible play for all – to name a few! They have also been foster carers for 18 years and currently care for two children in long term foster placements.

Fostering has been a huge part of our lives alongside having our own children. It’s really the only thing we’ve ever known in terms of family life. When it comes to fostering, rules and regulations can be very different from bringing up your own children so we have to be mindful of that but essentially we treat all the children in our house the same – they are all part of our family and we enjoy holidays and family life together.

We have fostered many new-born babies and older sibling groups who have moved on to adoption. Although heartbreaking for us every time, we know we simply can not keep them all, (as much as we’d love to!). We gain so much comfort knowing they are being placed with great families. Seeing them build attachments to their adoptive parents is so special. Amazingly for us we keep in touch with all of them from meeting up, to regular updates, to having a Christmas get together at our house. The only trouble is the number of guests keeps growing and we will soon need a bigger house! We have formed some great personal relationships with adoptive parents whose children we have fostered and this is so special to us. To see children we cared for straight from the special care baby unit growing into teenagers is just amazing.

Paul was in children’s homes and foster care as a child and was eventually adopted along with his four siblings, so we can see how much adoption has changed over the years. We both had pretty colourful upbringings with lots of challenges in our childhoods and going through the adoption process really gave us the chance to reflect on our own pasts. We’d like adoption to continue to be normalised and to encourage people to come forward to adopt, especially from minority backgrounds.

Our life became complete through adoption and we created a very special family. We’ve been on the biggest rollercoaster and are still riding it! Your life completely changes when you become parents. Seeing our children healthy and happy is the most important thing to us now. We never tire of watching our children have fun, whether that’s during days out a theme park or just dancing in the house.

There are many challenges of course and the key for us is being prepared for the unexpected. Children develop and change so much over time and parenting will never be perfect but focusing on the positive helps us through the tough times.

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