So, for some reason I’ve been a bit busy for writing blog posts. This isn’t just adoption related but work related too as (don’t tell anyone but…) a lot of my posts are actually written on my work computer.
We are currently on the cusp of sending off our adoption paperwork so that the court can decide whether to change us from ‘Prospective Adoptive Parents’ to ‘Adoptive Parents’. There are quite a few differences between the two, mostly legal, but at that point we no longer need to deal with social services unless we want to. We would contact their ‘Post-Adoption’ team rather than our own social worker if we felt we needed help. At this point the agreed Contact plan will be triggered – I will write a post explaining about that at a later date.
We would have preferred to send the paperwork off sooner than we have but we are currently waiting for some information from social services which we have no other way of obtaining as it is confidential. So we are, yet again, at the mercy of their organisational skills and ability to follow through on promises. To be fair, other than the odd “blip”, they’ve been pretty good so far.
It is a little frustrating having to wait, as we know how long the courts can take and if we don’t send it off soon it won’t get processed fully until after Christmas, which no doubt would mean the end of January. But, it’ll happen when it happens. At least we seemingly have the support of social services and being able to say that so soon after having our children placed with us is actually quite good as I know of people who have had to wait a year or more before they have had that backing. Technically you can send off the paperwork without their support but as they are the ones who the courts look to for evidence that the adoption will work out it may be futile. Plus, as with us, there may be information which they have and you need in order to complete the documents, with which they may not be forthcoming.
Social services are currently working on what they call the ‘Life Story Books’, we have seen drafts of them, but again I will write a post about what they are later.
Our children have settled in better than even we expected them to, we can see that they’re progressing every day, and ultimately that is the reason why we’re here.