A Letter To My Son

Dear Son, As I write this we have just become your longest ever home and I look back to see how far you have come, how much you have changed since that day when we first met you. Not only you though, as I have changed too. The day that I was first called ‘Dad’ will forever be stuck in my mind, how a nervous man walked into a stranger’s home and had his life changed forever. Walking tentatively through the door, we could hear your social worker chatting with your foster carer. You were still eating your lunch, which

Turning The Tables – IRO

If you’re a foster carer you’ll be overly familiar with what an IRO is. If you’re an adopter you may not know. Every child that is in care will usually have an IRO – Independent Reviewing Officer. They are meant to be there, amongst other things, to ensure that the best interests of the child are being represented and that everyone is doing their jobs properly. Every few weeks/months a child in care will have a LAC (Looked After Child) review – which is a meeting that is meant to have all the main people involved with the child there

Getting the Meek to Talk

When my Eldest came to us, he wasn’t the most talkative of people. He was fairly happy to just fade into the background and watch the comings and goings of the house. He was at his most talkative when we were in the car and he spotted lorries, bridges, cars, vans, ambulances, etc etc etc and liked to point them out along with their colour. At home was another story. He was very meek and quiet. He would talk to us, he certainly wasn’t shy, but rarely exerted any will (other than the odd foot stomp). One of the books

The Best Present

We have received the best Christmas present anyone ever can this year. We have become the irrefutable, absolute, legal parents of our children. (with no backsies!) Shortly after my post in September, we sent off the Adoption Order paperwork. We hoped that we had managed to get it to the court in time for it to be processed before Christmas, but we expected to be too late. We had been told it should take about 12 weeks, and that took us up to and probably beyond Christmas. A couple of weeks later we received a letter from the court telling

Life Story Books

Here’s a post I promised a couple of months ago about what are called Life Story Books. Somewhere along the line ‘the powers that be’ found rather than concealing a child had been adopted, treating it as a taboo subject, as if it were something to be ashamed of, that if someone knows where they came from and why they are better able to become well-rounded individuals. One of the things which social services are now obligated to do to help with this is to provide every adopted child a Life Story Book. So what are they? They are a

It’s been a while, but here we are…

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

What Happens Next?

So, we have our children Placed with us. That’s the technical term ‘Placed’ – as in they have a Placement Order so they can be Placed with prospective adoptive parents. Yes, that’s technically what we still are. When does that change? The answer to that varies depending on the age of the children, how settled they are, and what your personal circumstances are. The children need to be Placed for a minimum of 10 weeks before the prospective parents can apply for what is called an Adoption Order. This is when the case goes to court and if successful the