The assessment is not something the adoption agency does to you - it is something that you and the agency do together.

You will be expected to attend group preparation meetings to share ideas about all aspects of modern adoption and to talk to professionals involved in adoption and people who have personal experience of adoption - as adoptive parents, birth parents or adopted people.

You will also be given your own adoption social worker who will have a series of discussions with you and your family during the assessment and will be there to guide and support you through the whole adoption process.

The assessment will help you to decide - as you discover more about what is involved - whether adoption is likely to be right for your family and what impact it might have on each family member.

It will also help us - and you - to think about what particular qualities your family has to offer. What sort of family life you would be providing for a child; what kinds of challenges you could respond well to, and what sort of child or children would fit best into your household.

It is also essential for us to be sure that people coming forward to adopt will be committed to caring for the child. Enquiries, including criminal record checks, must be made into your background. Your doctor will be asked for a confidential medical report to so that we know that you are likely to be fit to care for a child through to adulthood.

You will also be asked to provide at least two personal references from people who know you well on a personal level. No checks will be made without your knowledge and consent.

The process described above can seem lengthy and very detailed. It is necessary to make sure that people who are approved as adopters have the skills, knowledge and ability to care for children in a safe and responsible way that meets what are often complex needs.

Very few of the children placed for adoption nowadays are babies - most often they are older children who are unable to live with their original parents because of abuse or neglect. These children may have experienced a number of changes of carer as well as many unhappy experiences, which show themselves in difficult behaviour and a reluctance to put their trust in adults.

Parenting these children and trying to repair the damage can be a profoundly rewarding but also very challenging task.