An acute shortage of adoptive parents has forced a leading adoption agency to seek out women and men in their forties who mistakenly believe that they are too old to qualify.

The decision by many career women to put off having children until their late thirties means that many do not even contemplate adopting a child until they are over 40. Two thirds of the public mistakenly think that is too old to be considered, an ICM poll shows.

NCH, a big children’s charity that runs an adoption agency, commissioned the poll and described its findings as “staggering”. Under its rules women and men in their fifties are eligible to adopt. It requires only that one parent is at or below retirement age when the youngest child turns 18. That means someone in their early fifties could adopt a four-year-old.

Other adoption agencies and local authorities have equally flexible rules. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering recommends a maximum 45-year age gap between the parent and youngest child. NCH, which specialises in finding homes for children over 2, is planning to start a specific recruitment drive for those aged over 40.

Links will be forged with big companies to get them to alert their employees to adopting, with articles placed in staff magazines. The agency will also approach more fertility clinics to see if they are willing to carry literature about adopting.

That requires delicate handling, according to Sue Cotton, head of NCH’s adoption agency. “We have to be sensitive about fertility clinics, and we are aware that communicating the message about adopting is all about timing,” she said.

“We know many women when they embark on treatment are so focused on trying to get pregnant they will not take messages on board. However, later in the process they become more receptive.”

Advertisements will also be placed in lifestyle magazines for older women, rather than just local newspapers.

Ms Cotton, who has worked in the adoption service for many years, said she knew that there were misconceptions but was still taken aback by the ICM poll. The days of finding a young couple in their late twenties to adopt a family are long gone, she said.

“People are starting their families later and later now, and often don’t start trying for children until they are approaching 40. If they have trouble conceiving, they may try IVF, which adds on another few years, so often they are in their forties. Older people bring something very positive to adopting — maturity and experience.”

Fewer than 10 per cent of adopters are over 45. The average age of couples approved for adoption is 37 years and 8 months.

About 6,000 children are waiting for adoption. They live in local authority homes or with foster parents. More than half are groups of brothers and sisters who need to be placed together. Many others have special needs and come from difficult families with a history of alcohol abuse, drug addiction and mental illness.

David Holmes, chief executive of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said that the need was now so acute that anything that could persuade older people to come forward had to be considered.

“Agencies are looking for adopters who have the physical and mental energy to care for demanding children, and whose lifestyle suggests they will still have that energy when the child is a teenager, or young adult. Older children are among those children who wait the longest.”

He has been critical of Madonna’s decision to adopt a child from Malawi, saying it could seriously damage efforts to increase the number of children adopted in Britain. “People see a celebrity getting off a plane and think, ‘That’s an easy process’, and it isn’t. If people think it’s harder to adopt a child from this country, they may not consider domestic adoption.”

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