Professionals will know that adoption is a permanent legal process and that, by the time it is completed, all the responsibilities which were held by the child’s birth parents are transferred to the new, adoptive parents by court order. But, short of having been through the process oneself, or knowing someone who has, how can prospective parents find out how it actually works? How long does it take, for example? In an effort to give professionals who might not yet have had direct experience of adoption a few of the answers to commonly asked questions, Parents And Children Together, a voluntary agency (one of nearly 40 in the UK) operating in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, gives a quick skip through what clients can expect and when.