Before our second session with our Stage 2 social worker, I thought I’d clear out what’s currently in my head that I had intended on writing in a post at some point.
The other day my partner (I’m going to abbreviate him to OH – other half – from now on) asked me how I come up with stuff to write about. My answer was that I didn’t, I just write about what has happened. I store stuff up in my head until it reaches the point where I have enough to write something down. I’m glad I have a good memory as I can waffle on!
Including the original meeting we had to come up with a ‘Stage 2 plan’ and the one last week we have 9 sessions scheduled or already done (I didn’t count the scheduling session as a proper one, which is why last week was ‘Session 1’ and this week is ‘Session 2’, so in true scientist fashion I’ll call that ‘Session 0’). Two of these are individual meetings where the social worker speaks to just one of us on our own rather than together like at all the other sessions, from what I gather these will be about going through our childhood experiences, although I’ll provide more detail about what was asked afterwards.
As well as the assessment sessions, as part of Stage 2 my boss has been contacted by the social worker to establish that I actually work where I said I do. They count this as ‘housekeeping’ – i.e. a necessary task that just needs to be done. This just asked my monthly salary (which they already know, as part of Stage 1 involved showing them wage slips), my National Insurance number (why, I don’t know), and some comments about my reliability and trustworthiness. My boss showed me the form, then asked me for the first two bits of information and wrote a paragraph in the very small space provided for the comments. I’m unsure what he wrote precisely but he said it revolved around flexibility of working hours, and I trust him to have written something appropriate. (He sits on the desk opposite me and I can give evil stares all day if I find out he hasn’t – he’ll also read this I’m sure – you have been warned Mr Boss Man!)
We were also asked if we were ok for them to speak to the references we provided in Stage 1, or if we wanted to give new people. We said the ones we provided were fine so I think the social worker will be trying to contact them to arrange a meeting if she hasn’t already. We’ve warned them so it’s not a surprise.
Our adoption agency runs a number of courses that they recommend we go on before the approval panel. We have booked ourselves onto three of them, which are based around:
- Theraplay (that’s worth looking up if you’re not heard of it, it has been thoroughly recommended by the adopters that we’ve spoken to)
- Introductions and Matching including Life Story books
- Communicating and Connecting which is described as “Adopted children often have a background that includes neglect, which can greatly impact on their ability to communicate. This workshop offers an opportunity to explore early language development and the role parents can play in supporting, developing and extending these essential skills”
They all seem quite worthwhile and sensible to me.
Another thing the adoption agency run is a same-sex adopters group which we’ll be going to so that we can meet other adopters and prospective adopters who are gay so will have similar experiences to us, I think the purpose of this is to help extend our support network with people who know precisely the difficulties we might face.
And that’s my head emptied again, I’m sure I’ll have more to write about tomorrow after our next session.
