A new chatroom has opened at an award-winning Northcliffe website.

AdoptionChat is the latest addition to adoption-net.co.uk and will allow users to ask each other questions live online.

Readers are already helping rack up more than 130,000 page views a month, many of those on the popular bulletin board feature.

Their questions and advice cover social services, the adoption system and the law – the question and answer section also proving a draw to readers around the UK.

Site editor Matt Bailey said: “We were fielding more than 100 questions a week from people interested in adoption and fostering on our bulletin board and realised there was a need to offer a new service which would allow readers to talk to each other – and pass on the benefit of their personal experience to other people through our site.

“Now all people have to do is log on to adoption-net.co.uk, click on the chat icon and off they go.”

The online chat features the latest user-friendly technology, making it easy for anyone to join in – even if they are not Internet experts – and the system was trialled on a group of web beginners.

Matt said he hoped people who wanted to get involved with adoption or fostering – or who had a question they were perhaps too nervous to ask social services staff face to face – would make use of the new facility.

Questions will be welcomed from people hoping to adopt children, people searching for birth parents and others who want to talk about how they successfully went through the system, either through being adopted or as an adoptive parent.

He said: “Many people fear the wrong question – even something as simple as ‘am I too old to adopt?’ or ‘can I adopt and keep my dog?’ – will leave them with a black mark against their name.

“Through adoption-net – and the online chat – they will be able to ask these questions, and discover the answers at the click of a mouse.”

The chat room is monitored and moderated during its opening hours.

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