We had to go to Mexico to escape UK’s twisted system: How one couple who wanted to adopt got round council bureaucracy

Twice, my husband and I have tried to adopt children through our local authority. Twice, the over-bureaucratic, ideologically-twisted local authority has stood in our way.

Eventually, we had to travel halfway around the world, to Mexico, where  thanks to a far more efficient, orderly, sane system we now have a beautiful three-year-old daughter, Gaia, and one-year-old son, Luca.

The adoption system in Britain is a mess. The average child will wait two years and seven months to be adopted and during that time they will be bounced around the system while their birth mother – often addicted to drugs or alcohol – continues to neglect them.At the same time, the desperate adoptive parents are forced to jump through every hoop the local authority asks them to.

One of the most pernicious ideas in current thinking is that children should be placed with parents who exactly match their racial make-up.
I am white and Italian – although I have lived in Britain for 16 years – and my husband is white and British.

Our local authority, Ealing in West London, rejected our application immediately without even seeing us in the flesh. Apparently they deemed we were too white and middle class. Although we are medically able to have children, we chose to adopt. I have an adopted younger brother and I have seen at first hand the wonderful benefits of adoption.

We were a perfectly ordinary, decent, suburban couple hoping to provide a child with a loving home. We were both in full-time employment: my husband Rick is an ex-banker who works for an energy company and I used to be global communications director for Greenpeace.

We didn’t even smoke – often a problem for prospective adoptive parents.But we were treated like criminals. We were presumed guilty until proven innocent. The local authorities will talk to your parents and your relatives, get bank references and work references. It’s extraordinary – why would we be prepared to go through all this if we didn’t want to be good parents? It was extremely frustrating and invasive.We already owned our own home but we had to renovate it in order to satisfy the local council even before the process of being approved for adoption had begun.

After they had rejected us, Ealing even admitted they had a cap on the number of white parents who could adopt black children and in a farcical twist, after denying us the chance to adopt a non-white child from the same postcode, they suggested we adopt abroad. Mexico was a bit of a roll of the dice, chosen partly because I could speak Spanish. The Mexican end of the process was wonderfully efficient. Our caseworker met us within a week, and talked us through the process.

The authorities were a  hundred times more caring  than in Britain. Here, we never once met our caseworker at the Department for Education. Whenever we sent them an email, we got an automated email response, saying we couldn’t contact them; they’d have to contact us.

The only problem in adopting Gaia came from the British end. It was a shambles every step of the way. We were approved by our local authority and the Department for Education before going to Mexico. But once we got to Mexico, the British Department for Education lost our papers, and we had to wait three and a half months for them to post the documents to us.

Finally, when we came back through Heathrow, our two-and-a-half-month-old daughter was detained for six hours by immigration authorities, and we were accused of being child traffickers. But Gaia settled in happily and we began to think about adopting again.

When we returned to Ealing to tell them that we wanted to adopt another child, we thought our chances were better as a mixed-race family. No chance. The local authority told us we could only adopt another Mexican baby, from Ealing. What were the chances of finding a baby with that exact background in that exact postcode!

So we returned to Mexico and adopted Luca. This time, the process took only three months (it took six months for Gaia, because of British inefficiency). To adopt a baby in Britain takes nearly three years.

In February, the Government tried to reverse this farcical state of affairs, laying down new guidelines covering ‘transracial’ adoptions, saying that race should not be an issue. But inter-racial adoptions haven’t increased as a result, because local councils and social workers blithely ignore the guidelines and refuse to make the interests of vulnerable little children a priority.

This book is based on true events. However, the names of all persons connected to our adoption are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The opening instalment from the first chapter, Too White To Adopt.

June 5, 2008
The queue in the customs hall at Heathrow was long, full of weary and bad-tempered travellers, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to be home. We stood behind the yellow line, waiting our turn to be called to the desk.
“Next, please.”
Rick went ahead and put our three passports triumphantly on
the counter.
The agent, her skin pallid, her brows wrinkled, peered at us over her spectacles with suspicion. I wondered if it was because our passports were each of a different nationality; his British, mine Italian, and Gaia’s Mexican. She looked down and then looked up again, this time with a stony visage.
“Where have you been?”
“Mexico,” I said happily.
“For how long?”
“Five months.”
“Why were you there for five months? What were you doing?”
“We were adopting our daughter. This is her,” Rick said.
“Adopting, were you?”
I sensed she was angling for something.
“Yes, we went especially to adopt a child.”
“Is she yours then?”
What a strange question, I thought.
“Of course she is ours,” Rick said proudly. “See? There’s our surnames on her passport”
She shot him a glare, then fixed us with a look that said: Here is another couple trying to cheat me.
“Did you visit the Embassy before travelling?”
“Of course we did.” Rick’s reply was clipped. The poor guy had been suffering food poisoning for weeks and barely had the energy to stand, let alone put up with an inquisition.
“We have all our documents here in case you wish to see them,”
I said helpfully. She ignored me and looked hard at Rick.
“Mr Bowden, I will have to detain this baby and yourselves.”
I gripped Rick’s hand. He looked at me as if to say, “I’ll talk.”
“What are you talking about? This is nonsense.”
The agent wrote something on a piece of paper.
Gaia, who was unsurprisingly exhausted after thirty-six hours of bus and plane travel, began to scream. I ground my teeth and tried not to cry.
“Didn’t you hear? I am detaining your daughter.” She handed
Rick the piece of paper. “Follow me,” she said.
We followed her to a tiny cubicle, where two Mexican girls had already taken up involuntary residence in one corner. They both looked scared. One of them was sobbing. We looked at the paper where she had written Gaia’s name. It read:
Gaia Polini, I am detaining you. I am also confiscating your passport.
“How can you arrest a baby?” I asked. She shot me a look of pure poison, then turned to Rick.
“Listen to me. There are a lot of things you are supposed to have done before you brought that baby into this country. You are supposed to have interviews with social workers, and something called a Home Study…”
I jumped up.
“But we did all that. I can tell you the name of our social worker, and even the name of the person we met today at the embassy before leaving!”
“I am not talking to you. You are not even British.”
This woman was pure bile. I wanted to scream at her, to shake her, to say, “Don’t you understand what we have gone through to bring this child here?”
She ignored the question and then began to address Rick as if he was intellectually challenged.
“Now, Richard. Let me tell you why I have put you in this little room. We are here to protect the welfare of the children, and you clearly haven’t followed the legal steps to get you here. There are
many people like you who try and bring babies illegally into the country.”
God, did she think we were child traffickers? I had to put her right.
“But… but…” I said.
Rick shot me a look that said, Please keep your mouth shut.
Gaia, meanwhile, was yelling at the top of her lungs, despite my best efforts to rock her to sleep. Her nappy was wet, and she was hungry, but I was too scared to say or do anything, I had run out of boiled water to mix with the formula milk, so I couldn’t even comfort her with her bottle.
“Now, what documents, if any, do you have with you?” she asked Rick.
“We have them all,” I said to Rick.
I started pulling them out of the trolley suitcase.
“Home Study…” I was spelling them out one by one to him as I was getting them out, knowing she would hear and realise she was wrong.
“References, CRB checks, finance checks, birth certificates, marriage certificate, psychology report, doctor’s report, certificate of eligibility, Gaia’s birth certificate, adoption order from the court of Colima, ticket of meeting with the British embassy.”
As I finished emptying the bag, a look of surprise appeared on her face. Then she turned to me and said: “I need your passport too.
I am confiscating that also.”
There’s a name for people like us who can have children but choose to adopt instead. We are called preferential adopters. How we got to that point is a result of my family background and political beliefs, Rick’s own beliefs about society, the desire to share our lives with a little one, and a hell of a lot of debate.
Rick and I had been married for two years, but we’d been together for six. We were happy and childless by choice. We were
the stereotypical high-flying couple with dream jobs that took us around the world, often in different directions. We commuted regularly to exotic cities, and for both of us the lifestyle was addictive… for a time. But the novelty had worn off. We began to feel like it just wasn’t quite enough. We had so much to give that it didn’t feel right to keep it all to ourselves. We had gone back and forth with the thought of starting a family. Yet something about having a baby just didn’t seem ‘real’.
Our conversations fluctuated wildly between for and against. We’d talk about how exciting our life was compared to that of our friends with children, but how uninspiring, exhausting, and empty it could be. Relationships need to move forward, and frankly there are only so many weekend breaks you can have before you think: I’ve done this all before. There has to be more. That ‘more’ was a family.
Falling in love had happened relatively late for us, and we knew better than to take it for granted. We both felt we had been able to put the ‘soul’ in our soulmate relationship. We didn’t just like each other; we each thought the other would make a great parent.
When I hit thirty-five, I realised that I didn’t want young teenagers when I was heading towards sixty. For Rick, this appeared to be the signal he was waiting for. We began to discuss the possibility of children in earnest. For most people, that discussion would usually revolve around the woman taking folic acid, keeping track of exactly when her period came, and ensuring they had sex on the ‘right’ days.
“We are trying for a baby,” they would then announce to their friends.
Our methodology was more unorthodox. For a start, I had strong social and political beliefs, borne of the teachings of an intellectual trade union leader father and a savvy mother. My parents gave me a biological brother, but also an adopted
one. Growing up with Francesco taught me that not everyone in the world was as lucky as we were. I am sure there are many middle-class children in the Western World who would not consider having to share the sofa bed in the lounge with a little brother as ‘lucky’.
We lived in a tiny flat, and we had hardly any toys. But we had a family, and we had love, which my parents felt we could share with another, less fortunate person. They taught us that love is something you give away. The more you give, the more it grows, and this is how we help create a better world. They also taught us that a home is not a gigantic house or a bedroom to yourself, but a roof over your head, a nourishing meal, and plenty of cuddles. My views on social justice and opportunity were established well before I became a news journalist and saw the world in all its beautiful humanity and ugly despair.
Rick had also come from a very socially aware family. He grew up in a council flat in Scotland, with parents whose flower power ethics stayed with them throughout adulthood and influenced their teaching careers. He shared my views on home, family, and love. We were in perfect agreement: love makes the world a better place.
One lazy, rainy November weekend, after making love, I lay on my back while Rick lazily stroked my stomach.
“You’d look stunning as a pregnant woman,” he said.
“What?” I smiled.
“You heard me.”
“Really… I wasn’t necessarily thinking that’s how we would start our family.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are already so many children in the world with no love in their lives. You know I’ve always felt we would do more good by opening our hearts to a child who’s already here, whose life would be miserable otherwise.”
“So no baby with my eyes and your hair?”
“Is it so important to you to have a little mini-me? You men and your egos!”
“Fra,” he said. “You can’t simplify it like that. Humans have a biological and emotional need to procreate. You can’t just say that has to be put aside in order to help suffering children. You’re opening up a big Pandora’s box on the whole business of existence if you do that.”
But the more we talked about it, the more he became open to thinking beyond having a child in his own image. He was more curious about adoption than afraid of it. Initially our deliberations were abstract, but over a period of months they became more serious and specific.
“I am in two minds about it, really,” he said one night over dinner in our favourite local restaurant.
“I know you are. But don’t you agree that there are so many children in need in this world that we don’t need to necessarily procreate? Plus we have limited resources, and there are too many people on our suffering planet, right?”
Silence, while he pretended to read the menu. I turned to the waiter, who’d been waiting.
“What do you think? Do you have children?”
The poor guy had nowhere to go.
“Er, no, I don’t, but… I think adoption is a good thing to do if you feel that strongly. Can I take your order?”
I wasn’t listening. I was on my soapbox.
“It’s upsetting how in today’s supposed ‘developed world’ we just want, want, want. We want children, we want a boy or a girl, we want two or three or just one, we want them white, black or a nice mixture of the two. We want them to look like us. I guess I am no better as what I am really saying is that I want to adopt! Oh, it’s so complicated.”
Rick tried to change the subject.
“Fra, they’ve got your favourite risotto on again. Look, wild mushroom. Come on. We’d better order.”
“I just know…in my heart that it’s… right… at least for me…for us…”
Rick interrupted.
“Francesca is having mushroom risotto. I’ll have the halibut, thanks.”
He’d had enough for now. But I knew he was thinking about it.

More tomorrow …….

I did not legally become a mother until the paperwork was signed and Gaia was ours. But I had become a mother in my heart the instant I made room for her there, long before we had even met.

I’d heard other women speak of that magical moment when their newborn baby was laid on their breast to nurse for the first time. They talked of a sense of recognition, and of forming an eternal bond in an instant. Of course, that instant was really the culmination of a nine-month-long journey, one that could be long, arduous, and fraught with uncertainty.

Our journey to Gaia was no different in that sense. It was a search that often felt like it would never end. More than once it threatened to tear apart my sanity and my marriage to Rick. In my case, though I had not carried Gaia in my body, I had carried her in my soul, dreaming of her with all my might, and like the belly of a pregnant woman my soul had expanded to fit her. I’d spoken to her in my darkest moments, asking her to be patient, to have faith that we were coming. We were meant to be together, I told her. I explained—for I was sure she was listening—that there were great hurdles to be overcome, and there were strong forces working to keep us apart. But I assured her that we would never give up—never.

And we did not. When I first saw my baby, I understood what those birth mothers were talking about. A piece of me that had been missing suddenly clicked into place. In that single moment, all the pain of the past year became worth it. Finally, we were a family.  The dark energies that were trying to separate us had been vanquished…or so I thought.

This is the story of how we found our little girl and brought her home. In one way, it’s a simple, small story, but I have several strong reasons for writing it.   I write to raise awareness of an issue, the one of adoption, that is both complex and convoluted and where the system is failing the very children it was set up to help. We weren’t infertile, that wasn’t the issue. We decided to follow our political principles and give love and a home to a child who would otherwise not have one. It was that simple. Or so we thought. In our quest we were judged every step of the way and had to contend with a system that needs reforming and has a long way to go before the choice of giving love to a child who needs it becomes as simple as it ought to be. We were forced to waste precious resources—time, money, energy—on dealing with redundant legal procedures and governmental incompetence, when we could have been lavishing these on our child instead. Every day hundreds of thousands of children are forced to live in dire circumstances or languish in care because the paperwork to adopt them either domestically or from abroad is simply too complicated.

While I understand adoption is not the only way to help them and vetting potential adopters to make sure they will be fit parents is crucial, the process is needlessly long and invasive and bureaucratic. It is quadrupled if you are the first from your own country attempting an international adoption in a certain place for the first time. In our case, we were the first people from the UK to adopt from Mexico, and judging by the reaction we received from adoption and immigration officials, one would think we had announced our intention to eat the child, rather than give her a good home. This is a state of affairs that needs to change, the sooner the better.

I write to give courage to those who feel that the best way for them to help this troubled world is to give a home to a child who otherwise wouldn’t have one. Like us, you will sometimes encounter polite confusion at best and outright hostility at worst. Don’t give up. Your child is out there waiting for you. I write especially for the orphaned and abandoned children of the world, of whom there are millions. Many of them will die of starvation, disease, or neglect before reaching adulthood; others will never realise their full potential; and some will even grow into adults who perpetuate the very injustices that caused their own unfortunate circumstances. There are many children in need, but there are also
many families who would give them a good home. By raising awareness to this issue and campaigning for a more humane adoption process, I hope less of them will grow up hungry, scared, or sick, with loving parents. It’s a dream, I know, but I can think of no more worthy one to pursue.

I am writing also for more general reasons: to give support to those who feel they have a strong vision of how to make the world a better place, but who may feel overwhelmed by the obstacles put in their way by the prejudices of society or the pitfalls of bureaucracy. Two of my heroes are Martin Luther King, Jr., whose famous “I have a dream” speech continues to resonate throughout the world, and Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Both these men accomplished feats that transformed things on a global level, but they started out small, in the face of tremendous odds, armed only with the belief that one person can make a difference. I believe that no matter what our personal mission or vision may be, following their examples will ultimately benefit all of humanity.

And finally, I am writing this as a gift for Gaia, so that our little girl may read this one day and know how much we always loved her.

This is what I know. I know that though I am not their birth mother, I am their real mother. It feels pretty real to feed and dress them, nurse them when they’re sick at night, watch them walk and grow. I am the one who takes them to nursery and wonders if it is right for them. I think about their future; about school, possible bullying, their interactions with other children and adults. I plan birthdays and picnics and feel my heart skip a beat if I think anything is wrong with either of them. I laugh (a lot) and if I go away with my husband overnight I miss them and rush through the front door to make sure all is well. As it should be.

Meanwhile I am very aware of the birth mothers, the women who carried them. I make sure they also know it by reading special stories to them, by telling them their life stories before we came into their lives. I know that the mothers will think of them on their birthdays, and that is just the way it is. But, like other adoptive parents, I have to be careful. There is far too much complexity to happily say, “oh wouldn’t it be nice to have them in contact with their birth mothers for occasions like this one.” Whatever I choose to tell them, and however we decide to manage this complex issue where there is no such a thing as doing the ‘right thing’,  our children have one mother and one father.

In our case, the women who gave up their babies did so not because they couldn’t afford them, but because adoption was the only way out of their respective situations. For their own reasons, they could not have these babies with them – ever. They had a plan for them, as all the mothers who were at the VIFAC Institute in Mexico did.

That is why they were there. They were not in a public hospital, laying there, undecided. They knew the Institute would ensure their children were adopted by a good family and had requested no further contact. This may sound odd to people who simply can’t envisage it, but they wanted to cut ties and leave.

There is no ideal way to do adoption, However, if they’d been abandoned or neglected until they ended up in the system, they may well have been stuck there. Rick and I don’t kid ourselves that we are birth parents. Why would we? But that doesn’t make our ties any weaker.

Pragmatism aside, yes there are days when I would love to reassure Gaia’s mother that this tiny baby has grown into an independent, strong, happy and laughing three-year-old. I would love to introduce her to Gaia’s friends and grandparents and show that she has established a life and now has a sibling to look after (and annoy).

On Gaia’s birthday she did as she has the previous year: she lay in her bed, in her relaxed, undeniably Mexican pose with her hands behind her head waiting for us. We came in with gifts, hugs, kisses and songs. It is our routine and one I hope that my children will have for a long, long time. I am so proud to be a mother and grateful that we are in a position to make a child’s hopes and dreams happen.

Gaia and her new brother Luca have a family who love them unconditionally and feel fortunate to have them. That is how real adoption feels. That is what being an adoptive parent feels like.