Just a quick update on my previous post. The adoption agency have confirmed that they had already been told that we have received our DBS Certificates, and they have said that because they contain “No Information” (i.e. they prove we don’t have a criminal record of any kind) they do not “need sight of them”. That means that the agency definitely have got all the information they need to progress us to Stage 2. The 2 months that Stage 1 is meant to take finishes on the 25th of August, so we will know by then if we can proceed.
Category: Adoption
Not a criminal!
It’s official, I have no criminal record according to the Disclosure and Barring Service certificate I have received in the post today. Of course I knew that already, but at least that’s another hoop that we’ve successfully jumped through. I’m just waiting to see if I need to send the certificate anywhere to prove I’m above board or if the adoption agency has received something already. I imagine that seeing as they requested the checks they’ll already know the results, and no one has told us we need to send the certificate anywhere (we didn’t even know we were going
The Waiting Game
As of 5.30pm last night we have completed everything we can for Stage 1 of the Adoption Approval Process. The “Health & Safety Check” turned out to be more of a look around the house making suggestions on what we might want to do to make things totally safe for a toddler. There wasn’t much we needed to do, some of our windows open out so far that an adult could fall out of them! So it will be a good idea to limit their opening capability. The only other main point we were told about was the pond, although
Moving Forward
Well, that was a productive weekend. On Friday we went to a training day entitled “Introduction to Adoption Day”, it was like being at school again. They had us and all the other prospective adopters sitting at tables in a horseshoe arrangement with three social workers and an outreach worker at the front talking to us. It was quite informative and certainly a useful insight into what is to come next. We were put into groups a couple of times, with couples being split into different groups so we worked with people we didn’t know. The activities we were assigned
Reading, More Reading and Medicals
The “resource list” that we have been given for the adoption process is as long as I am tall (which isn’t exactly tall, much to my detriment when calculating my BMI). Over the last few weeks we’ve both been ploughing through as much as we can before the 29th when we’ve got to hand our Adoption Workbook in with comments about what we have read. I’ve been reading mostly about attachment and bonding recently, much of which appears to be common sense, but I have found some of it quite enlightening and it will certainly be helpful in future I’m
Workshop
Yesterday we went to what was called an “Adoption Workshop”, we were a bit worried as it coincided with strike action from council workers and it was an 80 mile round trip to get there. Our fears were unfounded though and it all went ahead as expected. What has become apparent recently is that our adoption agency is still finding its feet with the new 2 stage process. This is fairly understandable as it is less than a year old, and they do seem to be very open about the fact they’re still learning and adapting it to improve it
References and DBS Checks
This past week we’ve heard from 2 of our references that the questionnaire they need to fill in has arrived and we’ve been to County Hall with our identification documents to initalise the DBS check. Firstly I would like to say how lucky we are to have the support of our friends and family during this process. One of our references in particular, despite both her and her husband having to work full-time in relatively inflexible jobs and being parents of a 1 year old little cutie she has found the time to speak to us about the questions she’s
Dredging The Past
I’ve been asked by the adoption agency to provide names of people I worked with at two places I left 15 years ago. The reason they’re interested in them is because both involved working with, or around, children. On the registration of interest form there was a section asking about jobs we held that involved working with children or vulnerable adults. I had two that I thought might be relevant, one as a swimming pool life guard where I interacted a lot with children, and one as a science technician at my old secondary school. Fortunately I am still in contact
Information Overload
Good news everyone! We’ve been accepted into the adoption process. What’s more, the adoption agency actually managed to reply to us within the maximum time-frame they had allotted themselves. Now the process begins in earnest. Welcome to Stage 1 of the Adoption Approval Process. We had been expecting a phone call to confirm whether or not we had been accepted by the adoption agency, the form implied it and so did the social worker we spoke to, I even chased them up via email to make sure they had received our form (still no reply to that), but in the
Waiting with the Dogs
Working Day 3 of waiting for a response from the adoption agency (it might be 4 but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt with regards to Royal Mail delivering the form). I thought I’d post some details about our dogs that the social worker that we spoke to seemed to take exception to us having. Our youngest dog, we’ll call him F, is just over 2 years old and we got him together from a puppy just before we moved into our current house and he is a working cocker spaniel. He’s a lot needier than our other dog,
