Chapter 7: Goodbyes and hellos

Words, of course, cannot adequately sum up the emotions.

Social workers have had to arrange what will be the final meetings - or at least their last for a very long time.

With Ruth and Stephen, the fortnightly intervals have been increased to four weeks. Now they are to come to an end altogether.

Before Bethany and Ben can meet their new parents, something very important has to happen. With the adoption process progressing quickly, their contact sessions with members of their birth family have already started to become less frequent.

Please look after them with all your heart. I know I couldn’t do it. You’ve got the chance, so just please look after them

“It feels as though you are losing a part of your body,” Patricia, their grandmother, says. “We've just got to remember all the things that we've done, so just keeping them in our minds and our hearts.”

Ruth has a message for the adopters.

“Please look after them with all your heart. I know I couldn’t do it. You’ve got the chance, so just please look after them,” she says.

And she wishes she knew more about these new parents.

“I’m not saying I want to know where they live or anything like that – it’s just nice to have that little bit of information. I know the kids will be safe – they wouldn’t put them with someone that isn’t safe, but it’s just a bit of general information on the adopters.”

Stephen later tells me what he said to his children.

“Daddy will see you again some other time. And [I] said to them, ‘Love you,’ and gave them kisses and hugs. And then I went.”

He says he would give his life for his kids. “I’d do anything for them and I’m really going to miss them,” he says.

While the goodbyes were taking place, the children still had not met the couple chosen to become their new parents. Now, finally, it is time for that to happen.

Ten months after being placed in a foster home and five months after a court decided they should be adopted, that day has finally arrived.

Bethany and Ben are about to come face-to-face with their new mum and dad in person for the first time.

Lucy the foster carer is reading the Teddy Bear Adventure books with the children again, when people arrive at the door.

“I looked up at the window and I saw new mummy and daddy coming,” Lucy recalls later. “I said, ‘Ooh, it’s new mummy and daddy’.”

Bethany and Ben get off the chairs and run to the door. Julie and Robert do not even have time to knock.

Bethany and Ben are standing in front new mummy and daddy, whose pictures they have just been looking at.

“That’s daddy and mummy,” says Bethany. “It is. It is. Yes,” Julie replies.

Soon Bethany and Ben are blowing the bubbles that their new parents have brought with them. And then they make cakes together.

“They opened the door and they said, ‘Are you my mummy, are you my daddy?’” Julie tells me a few weeks later. “So, we all sat around the kitchen table and had a chat and they talked to us and they sat on our knee. We played with them for a little while.”

“Sitting there with them at the table, I felt like a daddy then - on the first day we met them,” says Robert. “It’s what we’ve been wanting, what we’ve planned for. When we met them, I was a bit emotional after going home.”

The introductions are meticulously planned. The children and new parents gradually spend more time together and, after a few days, the children get to visit their new home for the first time. Bethany insists she wants to take her teddy bear book with her, so that she can look at the pictures again in the car on the way.

For the new parents, it is intense and exhausting.

“You want to know that you’ve done the right thing and you’ve made the right decision,” says Julie. “You want them to like you, but you also don’t want to be soft. It’s a bit like a crash-course in parenting for two weeks.”

Bethany and Ben move in with Robert and Julie exactly a fortnight after they first meet.

Five weeks later I ask Julie whether they had fallen in love with them.

“I don’t know,” she laughs. “I’ve never had children before. I don’t think I can answer that question at the minute. The attachments are growing each day. We’re really happy - really, really happy.”

And the couple are keen to stress they have no regrets.

“No regrets whatsoever,” says Robert.