Stage 2 Adoption Assessment: Session 6.
This one was difficult. Not insomuch as we had a problem with answering the questions, more to do with the feelings of guilt and self judgement when we answered them honestly. It was about what our expectations were from adoption (at least that’s how it was presented to us).
Basically, this was the time when we started to apply the filter criteria of the type of children we think we would be able to cope with or not. That means we had to say no to certain groups of children for certain reasons, leaving them to the world, hoping that someone else will say yes to them. I guess that saying no to them in a general way is far easier than having a child’s profile presented to us and us then having to say no to that specific child. It was hard nonetheless, especially when we got asked to explain why.
You have to be practical, ask yourself what you could cope with, what you are prepared to commit to, be realistic because this is a lifelong commitment. Ultimately be honest, the social worker isn’t there to judge you (despite what it might seem), they just want to know about what you are prepared to accept and commit to when trying to family find for you. Our social worker reminded us of that a couple of times during the session when she could see we were finding it difficult, she was really supportive.
In addition to that we were also asked about how we’d deal with a child that is taking drugs, smoking and drinking (not necessarily at the same time!). I think we talked so much about the first two that we forgot to say anything about alcohol.
The inevitable question of “what would you do to minimise the impact on the children if you split up?” was asked, which we’d read would be asked at some point. I’d been expecting it earlier but as much as you don’t want to think about that happening, you have to show that you are prepared and will do what you can not to disrupt the children too much, after all, they’ve been through so much already.
On a nicer note I asked how our SW thought we were doing and if she thought we were putting ourselves across ok. She said she thought we were and that she had no concerns and neither did her supervisor (the senior practitioner) about taking us to panel in February. That was nice to hear.
Another positive was that she said that the family finders in the agency were keen to see our profile – it’s not even finished yet! On that note we need to find some appropriate photos of us both to go on it. I enlisted my Mum to find some as she’s camera happy at family events and she’s found a few good ones.
This was the last session before Christmas, our last scheduled session is the first week of Jan, but we’ve been told we’ll be sent some questions to answer between now and then.
