How do you create that first impression?

How do you communicate the essence of a child?

How do you communicate the essence of a child in some 175 words underneath a photograph (in the Be My Parent newspaper profiles)?

Each child is unique, each child has a history like no other, each child has individual needs and abilities, each child makes people feel differently about her or him. Even parents feel differently about each of their children, although they may love them equally.

So how can social workers make a child come to life in one profile, among many, in a magazine? Especially, as can happen, if they are not the child’s actual social worker and don’t really know the child at first hand.

And what are we to make of the entries in Be My Parent which describe children who, by and large, are said to be happy, cheerful, rewarding, affectionate, lively and bubbly? Of course, all children are endearing in some way or another, but children who need new parents have had experiences that are also likely to make them sad, confused, withdrawn, demanding, aggressive, and to demonstrate a whole range of disturbing behaviour. These may be mentioned in the profiles, but often in an indirect way, which needs some understanding, or even decoding at times.

Everyone is trying to do their best for each child.

Social workers are eager to find a family and, inevitably, they have an image of the ‘right family’. In their eagerness they may try and ‘sell’ the child by drawing too rosy a picture, or they may be too prescriptive about the family needed, in an effort to limit the number of families unnecessarily making enquiries.

The dilemma faced by social workers and Be My Parent editorial staff is whether, by trying to make a profile more ‘real’, they are penalising that child, who may then appear less desirable than the rest of the ‘happy throng’. There is a laudable policy that every child featured in Be My Parent should have an equal chance of finding a family. But does this mean allocating the same space for all children and using similar language to describe them? [Note: single children can now be featured in a larger space, with the opportunity of a more comprehensive description].

Combined with space constraints in the paper, this policy has meant that shorthand expressions are frequently used, which can sound formulaic, such as: reaching milestones, needing firm boundaries and consistency, having made good attachments, loving a whole range of activities and being a joy to look after. And prospective adopters may find they have to learn to read between the lines of these descriptions, so they can try and visualise the child behind the words.

How can we show more of the real child?

First, social workers should know their child well enough to write a considered and particular description. If they haven’t had the opportunity to get to know the child, they should make every effort to enlist the help of someone who does. Above all, the child’s own perspective needs to be conveyed. Perhaps a poem or a story a child has written would speak for itself. Perhaps a drawing would say more than words. Often the child could tell their social worker what she or he wants families to know about them – if they were helped to do so. It is important not to present children in a way that could upset them now or when they are older.

What about the following? Susie says: “I want a Mum and Dad all to myself who won’t get cross when I get things wrong”. Susie is seven years old and can’t work out why she has had so many moves in her life. She is trying hard to learn how to read and write but she quickly gets frustrated. She now has special help and should be able to catch up before she goes to secondary school. She is a bit of a loner, with only one friend. Susie is frightened to move again, but her foster carer, who is a granny figure, will be able to help her. Susie wants to stay in touch with her foster carer, her birth mother and an older sister. Could you offer Susie continuity, make her feel safe and give her time to make new relationships?

It doesn’t matter how it is done, as long as the profile communicates something about who this child is and makes the reader want to know more. The challenge for social workers and Be My Parent staff is to make sure that children do not become indistinguishable from each other in an effort to be fair. Life is not fair and these children, who cannot live with their birth families, bear witness to that.

For you, as a prospective family, the profile is usually the first impression you will have of a child. It is essential to remember that it is only an impression, and that there will be much more information to follow.

Understandably, every social worker wants ‘their’ child to make a good impression but it also has to be the right impression. And sometimes they may be tempted to describe Aaron as ‘high-spirited’ when he really has a disorder that prevents him from staying still, in the hope that families will come forward, and they can then explain to them more fully about his needs. The dilemma is, would it not be better to invite families to respond to Aaron’s special needs in the first place? Families are usually not looking for the most appealing child, but for a child or children that somehow touch them in a way that is as impossible to explain as falling in love.

A family may respond to Aaron precisely because he has a specific disability and not in spite of it. Have we not all asked ourselves, “What does she see in him?” It is the same with adoption. And like falling in love, the hard bit is making it work in the long term.

What kind of family does the child need?

And it is a dilemma, again, trying to anticipate what will last in the long term. Social workers are often tempted to place restrictions on the type of family needed or to prescribe the child’s position in the family, based on their experience and their current knowledge of the child. This effectively limits the range of responses. If the description of a child can make a true impression, it may be best to leave it at that. Saying that Jamie would need to be the youngest child in the family, or that he needs two parents, immediately narrows the possibilities, while to be told that Jamie longs (or fights?) for the attention he missed as a baby, would allow prospective families to catch a glimpse of the child and to make up their own minds whether he could be the child for them. The most unexpected family may turn out to be the right family!

For example, initially, the agency of a little girl with profound sensory and physical impairments was certain she would need the attention of two parents, but in the end she was adopted by a single woman. The agency became convinced that a close network of friends could give the woman and her new daughter all the support she needed.

What kind of support is available?

Adoption support is now a statutory requirement before, during and after an adoption placement and until the child is 18. But it may be difficult to provide exact information at the time the children are being featured, all the more so as the support provided will depend on the prospective adopters’ particular circumstances. But details might perhaps be spelled out when specific support is likely to be needed by families if, for instance, a sibling group is to be placed together or if a child is disabled. Most families do not have a home or a car to take three, four or five more children, or a wheelchair! It might encourage more families to come forward if they knew which disability services would be available or that Jake, Justin, Natalie and Rosy did not need to have a wealthy family in order to stay together, because adequate provision would be made.

So where does that leave us?

We have moved from the 1970s when we talked of ‘advertising’ children. We now ‘feature’ children, and that should give us the key for making each profile as unique as the child. Advertisements compete for the market; features raise awareness for interested readers. It’s often hard to tell which car is being advertised on the glossy magazine pages; there’s no problem about telling the difference between a feature on Michael Owen and a feature on Michael Howard.

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in January 2005.

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.

Last updated: 10 September 07

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