WHAT a contrast in fortunes. I’m writing this a short time after learning good friends of ours are ecstatically happy after the safe delivery of their first child.

She has been cherished from the moment her parents knew she existed, with dad enthusiastically taking on nursery prep duties while keeping a watchful eye on the welfare of mum-to-be.

Their excitement about the impending birth has known no bounds as they’ve spread infectious glee to all those around them during the past few months.

This couple work together in a hard-graft, close-knit community, so their experiences as their daughter has developed and will now grow up has been, and will continue to be, closely shared by their friends and colleagues as well as their families.

This little girl is one of the lucky ones. She will know boundless love and support throughout her life from caring parents who will do all within their gift to make her happy and fulfilled.

She will be doted on, but not spoilt, and watched over but not smothered, while nurtured and encouraged to take her place in the world.

She won’t be pushed away and ignored. She won’t be whacked or thumped. She won’t be undermined or yelled at with monotonous regularity.

She won’t be the terribly abused, unloved and a constantly annoying nuisance that two little boys clearly were before being taken away from their birth parents and placed into foster care.

Brothers Connor and Daniel were featured on a Channel 4 documentary last week that followed the mixed fortunes of children seeking their “forever family” through adoption.

It was heart-rending, gut-wrenching television, not least because when shown consistent love and respect by their foster parents they have flourished in to two apparently normal little boys who for now seem very happy with their lot.

After such an appalling start in life given to them by their natural parents any affection shown to these two, however small, was going to be a bonus. And I was totally in awe of foster mum Katy, who clearly has an amazing all-embracing capacity for love that was humbling to watch.

But what made this such harrowing viewing was the “shop for a kid” adoption parties where children in foster care play while want-to-be parents circle the room looking out for potential sons or daughters that take their fancy.

I wouldn’t presume to put myself in the shoes of people who desperately want children but find that they can’t have them. And anyone who offers a home to a child or children, whether as a foster parent or a forever family, are clearly very special people indeed.

At the last count in March last year, there were a staggering 68,110 children in the care of local authorities.

During 2012, a total of 5,206 were legally adopted which tells you that there are more than 60,000 children in this country currently looking for their forever family.

But for children like Connor and Daniel the odds aren’t good.

Apart from the fact that at six and four they are apparently too old to be attractive to would-be parents, and in an ideal adoption world they come as a pair.

Foster mum Katy is adamant they shouldn’t be split up, but when it comes to adoption, siblings often are because it’s understandably harder to take on two youngsters than one. So better that one finds a permanent loving home than neither of them, goes the philosophy.

Clearly, adoption charity BAAF, which has been piloting the party-style adoption activity days, hopes that allowing television camera access to their work will raise awareness about the plight of children without families.

And although the programme makers handled the filming with sensitivity, it felt uncomfortably voyeuristic to watch Connor and Daniel quietly playing at not one, not two, but three adoption parties while potentially new mummies and daddies passed them by in favour of – cuter or younger? – other children.

It was pitifully sad to witness their plight, but these activity days are a step up from the norm, where current adoption procedures match parents and children without them even meeting. As organiser Bridget said matter-of-factly, you don’t buy a new sofa without sitting on it do you?

If nothing else I hope the film helps Connor and Daniel, plus thousands of others like them, to find a family where they’ll be as loved and cared for as much as the little girl of our friends who will be four days old as you read this. Because then, like her, they’ll be the lucky ones.