National Adoption Week has been highlighting what adoption is all about and encouraging more people to consider it.

Ally Hardy finds out what prompted a Knightwick couple to adopt five children, how easy it is to adopt, who can do it.

Having been adopted herself, Caroline Smith thought she would be the ideal person to adopt a child.

Social Services, however, did not agree.

After discovery that she and husband, Ian, were unable to conceive a child of their own, Caroline suffered the indignity of being told they were unsuitable as adopters because of her weight.

Determined, nevertheless, to have a large family, the couple travelled to Chile, where they adopted their first two children, Louisa, aged 16, and Alex 11. Since then, the once-discriminatory assessment process in this country has been updated and they have also adopted Michael, nine, Abigail, seven, and Emily, three, through the Worcestershire Social Services Adoption and Fostering Team.

Caroline, who now sits on the Worcester Adoption Panel, admits: "The process is not easy. It's a double whammy for some people, for people who are infertile, but it's never meant to be personal. The process now is literally to find out as much about you as a person or a couple so that they can find the right child for you.

"I was adopted when I was two and a half and that was a very positive experience. It made me what I am today. I was very lucky, really.

"It's been hugely beneficial to have been adopted in terms of then adopting. I can remember the children's home and was brought up knowing I was adopted. Money boxes and life story boxes weren't done then but I had all that - my mother did it instinctively."

As a result Caroline now keeps mementoes for all her adopted children, including hospital wrist bands, the clothes they were wearing when she and Ian first saw them and, for Louisa and Alex, Chilean mementoes including air tickets from two holidays there.

For the younger ones, whose birth parents live closer, the children maintain once-yearly contact with their birth parents.

Caroline explains: "Worcestershire runs a letter box system where you send a letter with a Christmas card and photos. It goes into a central place in Worcester and is then sent out to the birth parents who send a reciprocal letter, both are vetted.

"You have to be careful that you are not loading an eight year old with a letter that's unsuitable, but they keep everything on file, which the child can see when they are 18. It has its difficulties. It's not always easy to condense a year of a child's life into one letter and be sure of the kind of information they want to know. I usually reaffirm to them that we still talk about them.

"We do talk about their birth parents - we talk about what life was like before they lived in this house. We feel it's a very important part of keeping your child rooted. They need to know that we don't have any feelings of antagonism for these parents, whatever their life system.

"If you can do it and go for adoption it's a great way of making a family and there are lots of children out there waiting for a mum or dad or just a mum or a dad. It's very rewarding.

"You do suffer from people in the street who like to point out that your kids have different coloured hair. It gets easier when you have armed yourself with different quips although it hurts the first time it happens. We have as a family had to pool ideas and had to think in a different way.

"If you think you can give a child a life, love, care and protection, being a parent is not a job that everybody has to have any qualifications for. You have to have an enormous amount of patience. In Worcestershire there are at any time 30 to 35 children waiting. And during the last year the majority of children placed through the adoption panel have been under two."

Anyone interested in finding out more about adoption should call the county's freefone line on 0800 028 2158 for an informal discussion.