Housekeeping

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

Stage 2 Assessment – Session 1

Stage 2 has officially started. We had a 2.5 hour session with the social worker talking about our relationship and support networks. We were asked questions about how we met, why we think our relationship works, how it might change when we have children, and things like that. Nothing massively intrusive, just a kind of getting to know you session. Something we were asked, which I had been expecting so was prepared for, was how to explain to the children about the fact they have two dads. Children, especially younger ones, tend to accept their family for what it is.

Schedule Change

We met our Stage 2 social workers yesterday. Our assessment is starting next week. The provisional date for our approval panel is in February. Well, that was quick. Lots of dates in diaries, a few more training courses booked up, and we’re off. Twoish months ahead of what we had originally scheduled. I think because our assessing social worker is in training and under the supervision of the senior practitioner assigned to us she had more dates free in her diary than if it were the senior practitioner alone doing our assessment. This meant that she could work around our work

The Preparation Group

On Sunday I was unapproachable, irritable, short tempered, and I had a headache. Why? I was anxious about the preparation group that we were going to be attending on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week. To most people this probably wouldn’t have been a problem, certainly nothing to get anxious about; it was just a bit of training before we can move on to Stage 2 of the approval process. But, me being me, I’d over inflated the bits which I wasn’t looking forward to and forgotten the bits that I was. So, in my mind, we’d be going to

Cracks?

This week has seen some good and bad from the adoption agency. I think there may be some cracks in their seemingly well organised processes. We received an email from the ‘Training Team’ about the preparation group we are booked on next week, which detailed where it is and what time to get there, along with a brief outline of what we will be doing. It also told us we needed to have read the corresponding sections of the Adoption Workbook we’ve been given in Stage 1 to gain the full benefit. Wait. What? Adoption Workbook? What’s that then? I

No Contact! Contact!

Since being told we had a place on the October Preparation Group it has been total radio silence from the adoption agency. We know the dates that is it happening, but we don’t know where it is, what time it starts, if we need to do anything in preparation or if we need to take anything with us. In other words we feel totally unprepared for the Preparation Group. Then, at the tail end of last week, it changed. I was phoned by the Team Manager of the adoption team at the agency’s local office. I assume this means she’s the one

Reality Hitting

On the time scales we have set ourselves, with Stage 2 starting in January (that’s official now I think), and all being well, we could be approved to adopt by May 2015. That means at any point after that we could become parents depending on whether there is a child or children that we suit as parents. I put it that way around as the adoption process in the UK is now “child focused” which means that nothing is meant to happen that isn’t in the best interests of the child. Of course, the child fitting with what we ‘want’

Progression!

We received word yesterday that we have passed Stage 1 of the approval process. This means that our adoption agency processed the replacement reference in under 2 weeks, which, from what I’ve seen from other people’s delays and frustrations, is astonishingly fast. Let me summarise our process so far. Early March – Attended LGBT Adoption Week event after seeing it advertised on New Family Social‘s facebook page. Here we expressed our interest with our local authority about adopting through them. Within 2 days we had received and information pack and an invitation to an Information Event. We had been under

Sabotage!

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

Glacial Feedback

Just as I was starting to think about looking into some form of cryogenic suspension so that I could be woken up when the adoption agency had done something with our Stage 1 workbook my partner got a phone call from one of the social workers. (Let’s just say “Patient” wasn’t one of the 5 words I used to describe myself in the workbook) She was writing up a report which would then go to her manager for a final decision and she wanted some further details about our ‘support network’, namely how far away they were from us and