Linked

Let me rewind a few weeks back to before we were approved and when I wrote this: Connections. In it I wrote “Our social worker has also provided some information about another sibling group and that too sounds promising” but I haven’t mentioned anything since.

The reason I hadn’t was because those children hadn’t yet been given a Placement Order meaning that they couldn’t be adopted but only kept in foster care until such time as they got one, which may not ever happen.

We were approached by these siblings’ family finder social worker rather than the other way around, which at the moment is quite an unusual situation. They were upfront about the lack of a Placement Order, and we were repetitively told not to get our hopes up too much, whilst at the same time being asked if we were interested in adopting them. Mixed messages ensued for the next few weeks, playing with our emotions a little bit, with anything positive always being followed up with “but try not to get your hopes up”.

A few days before our Approval Panel date we had a meeting with two family finder SWs and they totally and utterly grilled us for every little piece of information they could about us to make sure that we fitted what they needed for the siblings. Apparently we did because at the end of that nearly 4 (yes FOUR) hour session they decided to show us some photographs. That was it, hopes were up with absolutely no chance of them going back down again regardless of what we rationally knew to be true.

One great thing about that meeting was that it completely prepared us for the Approval Panel, which was nothing like as grueling as what we had already experienced! After approval we had all the information that the SWs held given to us to digest (it was hours worth of reading!).

Then we heard that the Placement Order has gone through, for us this is good news, but overall I think it is a mixed bag. Somewhere a mother has lost the right to parent her children, and that is sad, yes it has been deemed for the good of the children, but still, even knowing some of the circumstances surrounding why, I can’t help but feel sad for her.

So, for us that means we are provisionally Linked with these children. We can stop looking for children (in all honesty we never properly started that as we were pre-linked with these ones before we were even approved), and their family finder will stop looking for parents. Why? Because, all being well in the coming few days, we have each found our family.

We have to go to another panel to be officially Matched, after that there will be introductions followed by placement which is when we can say goodbye to our social lives, any plans (not that we have many) will be need to be changed. We’ll know more about dates when we meet the children’s social worker later this week, but it’s looking like placement in May.

Our family of 2 + 2 dogs, will become 4 + 2 dogs, and that makes me happy beyond belief 🙂

10 comments

  1. Congratulations – sounds like good progress! I have to say I also felt guilt about the birth parents – we were encouraged to meet them – if you get the it may help. Our social worker said this guilt was no bad thing – it was a good sign that we could empathise with them.

    1. Thank you. We told the family finder that we would be willing to meet their birth mother, but she was dubious about whether she would want to meet us. We will keep that door open though I think.

    1. Thank you, it’s very exciting! And good luck to you on your journey too, I think we were at exactly the stage you are at now this time last year, just after attending an event in LGBT Adoption and Fostering week 🙂

      If you haven’t signed up to NFS yet I highly recommend it, it’s been invaluable to us so far!

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