Adoption in the time of coronavirus: How Covid-19 is causing delays and a spike in violence

While some parents wait in frustration, others are left struggling to cope without access to support, finds Helen Coffey

There’s been a decline in adoption despite more children coming into care (i)

“I just fell in love with her as soon as I held her. Everything about her was beautiful.”

Ella* can’t keep the emotion out of her voice as she recounts the first time she met Sophie*, the one-year-old girl she and her wife Phoebe* are in the process of adopting. It was back in February 2020, not long before the severity of the coronavirus outbreak started to become apparent, at an open-day event for prospective adoptive parents. The couple went along just to see what it would be like; they weren’t actually expecting to find a new addition to their family.

“We went in thinking, ‘this is weird, we’re just going to use it as a test’ – but it was an incredible way to meet our child,” says Ella. “It was so much better than just going through kids’ profiles.”