In the first year of our partnership in Kent, we connected with 246 churches, attended more than twenty Diocesan events and hosted 15 information evenings for people considering fostering or adoption. This activity has led to 53 fostering enquiries and 29 adoption enquiries and many families are now in the process of assessment.

And amongst all these numbers is a little girl.

Katy is only three but had known as many families in her short life. Thankfully, though, she has now been placed for adoption with Chris and Louise, who were prompted to adopt through our work. We connected them with a partner agency and, within a year, Katy came home for good.

Louise shares their story:

“When Chris and I met we were teachers. We always talked about adopting, especially having had first-hand experience with children who were in care or generally in need. Then we were blessed with twin boys and became busy working parents, and the idea of adoption became something we might do further down the line – much further down the line!

Krish shared at our church and we came away with the Home for Good book, but it sat on the nightstand for a good long time. Our church featured Home for Good on Adoption Sunday, and again we felt that perhaps God was calling us to adopt, but still we thought He meant later.

Then we had an opportunity to visit a church in Aberdeen. I finally read Home for Good on the train journey up, and the next day we went to two different church services in one day – and at both we met families who had fostered and adopted, inspired by having engaged with Home for Good. We knew it was time to act.

We spoke to James at Home for Good and he connected us with Diagrama, who gave us great support and worked efficiently, so the assessment process went quite smoothly. By the time we were approved at panel our social worker had already found our little girl, and we were thrilled to be approved so we could be considered as a match. Wonderfully, her social workers felt we were the right family for her, and she came home for good exactly ten months after we had started our assessment.

We are the fourth family our little girl has had, so there are many challenges as she learns to trust us, but there are joys too, like realising the shift in her understanding as she started saying ‘ours’ instead of ‘mine’. It is so important that we offer her consistent structure and routine, especially during this intense attachment period.

We understand, though, why social workers talk so much about support systems – you really need them! These first months have been more exhausting than when we had newborn twins and we are grateful for those around us. We are blessed with constant prayers and words of encouragement from our church – it was the first place we attended an information session on adoption, so there’s definitely been support from them!

But overall, we just love being together as a family with our three wonderful children, and it is really special to see how Katy is bonding with her big brothers."