We now know that we won’t be progressing to Stage 2 of the adoption process on schedule. We appear to have sabotaged our own application by providing references which didn’t fit the criteria they wanted.
We had to give 3 references, only one of which could be a family member. We interpreted family member to be immediate family, brothers, sisters and parents. We even asked (apparently the wrong people) if our references would be ok and were told they would be. So we continued with my brother, a school friend and my partner’s cousin’s partner.
Guess which one is not acceptable? Apparently family member means any relation whether by blood or marriage, regardless of how distant. To make matters worse, about 3 weeks ago, we were informed by an oddly subject lined email (in other words one that bore no relation to the contents) that one of our references wasn’t acceptable, but we totally missed it! It wasn’t until today, 5 days before we should be progressing to stage 2, that we have been chased up. Added to which I have been in correspondence with them for a couple of other things but at no point did they mention this was an unresolved problem!
And so, after a quick scrabble around trying to find contact details, an old family friend of mine has come to the rescue (who’ll read this I know, so thank you again!)
So, once again we’re back to waiting. Hopefully nothing else will come up!
