Meet the Team

Head of Service

Sally has always worked with children and families in a variety of settings, starting off her career as a nursery nurse after leaving school. She qualified as a social worker almost 27 years ago and has worked in adoption and fostering for most of the time since. For the last 18 years Sally has enjoyed opportunities to manage a range of different services within local authorities and voluntary agencies, gaining management qualifications along the way.

Over the years Sally has had a chance to work with a diverse range of agencies across the UK. She has been Vice Chair for a busy local authority panel and is currently the Independent Chair of a voluntary adoption agency panel in her spare time.

Sally is a mother, a proud grandmother and an adopter herself. Her passion lies with adoption, witnessing the fantastic outcomes and experiencing for herself, what a joy it can be.

Team Manager – South

Mairead has been a registered social worker for 20 years. Her background is in management, specialising in mother and baby, child protection and court work. She has worked in the field of fostering and adoption for the past 10 years and began working for Adopters for Adoption in 2017 as a principal social worker for the South and panel advisor. She has since progressed to become the south team manager.

Mairead lives with her partner and two little girls in London. In their spare time they love to walk with the girls and their 5-year-old cocker spaniel and spend most time transporting the girls from one activity to another.

Team Manager – Central

Mahongo joined Adopters for Adoption, as central team manager in 2021 but has been working with AFA as an independent social worker since 2014.

Having qualified as a social worker in 1992, Mahongo has substantive experience in statutory child protection services, gaining management qualifications as her career progressed. Her roles in statutory services included locality management of statutory social work teams and oversight of a locality early help family support service under the Sure Start programme. This experience gave her insight into safeguarding services and the delivery of early help for children and families. She also served as chair of an SEND resource allocation panel. Having worked in England and South Wales, Mahongo has a good grasp of cross-border issues that can impact family life, particularly when children are placed across local authority and national boundaries. She is a strong advocate for families and is keen to support adoptive families to navigate the complexities of adoption support services to access the early help they need to thrive.

In her spare time, she volunteers for a faith charity, loves gardening, cooking and baking, and looks forward to enjoying grandma time.

Team Manager – North

Penny has been qualified as a social worker for 28 years. She has worked with children and families in the safeguarding arena and later as a therapeutic social worker. In 2003, she coordinated the development and delivery of mental health services for looked after children across social care, health and education for two years.

Penny qualified as a play therapist 19 years ago and has worked independently as both a social worker and play therapist. She has delivered training to a wide range of professionals, foster parents and adoptive parents on areas such as attachment, child development, the impact of trauma and abuse and communicating with children.

Penny joined Adopters for Adoption five years ago and has enjoyed every minute of working with our adopters and their children.

Panel Advisor & Senior Business Support Officer

Angela began working as part of our wider Polais community in 2017 as an independent support administrator before progressing to senior administrator assistant, where she oversaw and coordinated administrative skills to Family Fund and Children’s Services contracts.

She has worked in the care sector for over 20 years, working with vulnerable adults and children within a private home setting, providing administrative and customer support roles and staff training.

Adoption Placements Manager

April has worked in the health, social care and private sector for almost 30 years. Her responsibilities have ranged from managing a telesales division, field sales, account management and marketing for a social care recruitment and resourcing organisation. Prior to joining AFA April’s role was in recruitment and marketing for an independent fostering agency for 10 years.

At Adopters for Adoption April has been responsible for the marketing and family finding for the last 5 years and is now the full-time dedicated family finder for the agency. April works with our approved adopters, their supporting social workers and authorities across the UK to enable them to find the right child for their family.

Principal Social Worker

Heather qualified with a Diploma in Social Work and M.A in Social Work in 1995 and has worked with both adults and children. She has experience of completing fostering and adoption assessments as well as offering post adoption support. Heather has also worked as a supervising social worker for families who foster, where she has gained experience in helping families to care for children whose behaviour is complex and challenging.

Heather has personal experience of adoption and is passionate about adoption as a means of finding forever families for children who cannot remain with their birth families. She is proud to have been a contributor to books on both adoption and parenting.

Heather is now a principle social worker at Adopters for Adoption after having enjoyed working with us as an independent social worker for three years.

Heather lives in the South of England with her partner, two children, labradoodle “Hamish” and cat “Bella”.

Principle Social Worker

Karen has worked with children and families in statutory and voluntary agencies for over 30 years, with a primary focus on adoption, fostering and kinship care. Karen was awarded a master’s degree in Social Work from Warwick University in 2010, returning to the local authority, where she gained a great deal of experience in her field. Her experience includes court work, child protection work, life story work and training adopters and foster parents.

She is a practice educator and has sat on adoption and fostering panels, and worked as a senior practitioner before deciding to work independently. She began working for Adopters for Adoption in 2018 as an independent social worker, and enjoyed her time so much, that she decided to join the AFA team as a principle social worker.

Karen, who lives in the West Midlands, has two adult children. When not at work, or in her sewing room, she can be found exploring the countryside in her newly restored motorhome, along with her partner Pete and their manic Border Collie Taz.

Principal Social Worker

Jane completed her MA in Social Work in 2005 and has since worked in both local authority and voluntary agency settings. Jane has spent the last ten years specialising in adoption, which is where her passion lies. Jane has experience of working in all different stages of the adoption process from assessment work and matching through to adoption support, tracing and intermediary services.

Jane has also enjoyed completing therapeutic work with children and their adoptive parents. Jane has qualifications in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and Theraplay. In addition to this Jane has experience as an Independent Panel Member for a voluntary adoption agency. In 2017 Jane was shortlisted to the final four for Adoption Social Worker of The Year at the National Adoption Awards.

Business Support Officer

Katie, our Business Support Officer at Adopters for Adoption has 9 years’ experience within children’s services. Katie provides solid business and administration skills and has also worked on improving and maintaining business systems, contract co-ordination and staff training.

Working with a team of qualified associate therapists, Katie coordinates the adoption support and therapy services within the team to ensure that all adoptive families receive the quality post-adoption support services that AFA has to offer.

Business Support Officer

Carol has worked in administration in a fostering environment for the past 12 years in a variety of roles including the placements team, area office administrator, fostering advisor and panel coordinator.

She has used this experience to support her in her current role, which encompasses everything from being the first point of contact for prospective adopters to entering assessment and coordinating preparation training.

Business Support Officer

Lianne has over 7 years’ experience within the hospitality industry, undertaking a wide range of administration duties and delivering highly personalised customer service on a daily basis.

At Adopters for Adoption, Lianne undertakes the reference checks for prospective adopters that are in stage one of the process, working towards achieving the two-month timeline. She also assists with marketing activities for the agency, in particular coordinating the bi-monthly adoption newsletter.

Lianne has really enjoyed her time at Adopters for Adoption so far, and loves the passion that the whole team gives to providing the best outcome for children and families.

Team Manager – Adoption Support Services

Sarah joined the wider community of children’s services in 2014, working in the parenting team and also facilitating Gateway groups raising awareness and supporting people who were or had experienced domestic abuse. Sarah is the manager of AFA’s adoption support team. She oversees the evidenced based interventions that support the parenting of children who have experienced early life trauma.

Sarah’s working life has been dedicated to helping and supporting others. Before joining AFA Sarah worked within a youth offenders’ unit and a semi-independent home for teenagers. Sarah also worked as a volunteer for the Samaritans. Sarah gained her advanced diploma in counselling and psychotherapy, before going on to qualify and train in Triple P – 0-12 and Triple P teens, Gateway, Solution focused brief therapy and Video Feedback Positive Parenting –Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD).

Sarah is passionate about her work, and felt truly honoured to receive the award for Adoption Support Practitioner of the year at the National Adoption Week Awards in 2018.

Family Support Worker

Kirsty joined Adopters for Adoption in 2017 and has been supporting the evidenced based intervention that supports the parenting of children who have experienced early life trauma.

Throughout her working life, Kirsty has shown dedication to helping and supporting others. Kirsty’s roles have involved working with children with disabilities, children in care and in child protection, working alongside parents with alcohol and substance misuse and running parenting groups. Kirsty firstly gained a degree in Early Childhood Studies and then went onto qualify and train in Triple P Teens, Solution focused brief therapy and Theraplay.

Kirsty is passionate about her work and helping make a positive change for children and families.

Agency Decision Maker

As the former CEO of Adopters for Adoption Sally successfully set up AFA in 2014

With over 40 years of experience working in social care, she has always been committed to permanency, raising quality standards for children and their families and improving outcomes. Having recently retired Sally has maintained her links with AFA by becoming the Agency Decision Maker.

Sally’s widespread knowledge and understanding of children’s social care includes child protection, early intervention, fostering and adoption. She is able to draw on her experience of working with looked after children and adopters to support Adopters for Adoption in approving adopters.