Mmm, but even though some people are turned down, there are many LA's which approve a diverse range of people - including people in their late 40's/50 ish, people with disabilities such as Cystic Fibrosis, people with difficult backgrounds, and so on. Why do you think LA/VA is an issue (out of interest, I've never really seen a huge difference between the two when it comes to adoption)
And even if no one was ever turned down, we still wouldn't have enough adoptive parents for SN and older children. If child A is 8 years old, has issues with being aggressive, has ADHD and needs direct contact once a year with birth mum...if child B is 6 years old and displays innapropriate sexual behaviour towards other children and adults and attachment issues with a serious need to control the household....if child C is 11 years old...and child B has fetal alchol syndrome, a heart defect, serious global developmental delays and limited vision...who will adopt them?? Most of our approved adopters want younger children and they do not want or feel unable to cope with more than mild emotional issues. Approving more adopters won't significantly alter what kind of children they are looking for (IMHO). We'll have more adopters than needed for young healthy children and still a serious shortage for the others.
I am on an American based forum and there are plenty of (care system) adopters there who are willing to adopt teenagers, children who live in locked-down residential treatment facilities with MH problems, quite a few want sibling groups of ~6 children at once!! You get people coming on asking for information to help them decide whether to adopt this child they are interested in, who is diagnosed with ODD, RAD, PTSD and ADHD and is on 6 medications at once (including 3 psyhcotropics) and has spent some time on a psych ward, but appears to be doing better now after improving in a residential facility. And I'm thinking 'What?? Wow, I wouldn't consider adopting that child!" And you know in some of those cases the children do actually do pretty well in their new families. But WHY would these children NEVER be adopted in the UK? UK parents wouldn't want them. IMHO it's a societal/cultural thing, not to do with the system which is in many ways similar over there (for foster sytem adoption anyway). How do we change the cultural bias against adoption in our society, and specifically the bias against older children and children with SN? I guess there will always be less people wanting older children than younger, but when I read the American board, I am left thinking there is a serious difference in people's perceptions of waiting children between our societies
I don't think one question 'are you happy with your sex life' is going to actually stop someone adopting if they are serious about it. Americans adopting from their own foster care system are asked exactly the same sex questions we are, and yet that doesn't put people off adopting.
In international adoption, adopters are assessed by their home country, so the hypothetical Americans would be assessed by their own agencies with the UK specifiying anything they need to have.