Where’s the Positivity?

Sometimes we concentrate too much on the negatives, some call this pessimism, others realism. We shout when we want to change something, but stay silent when things are good. It is seen everywhere including with adopters. I am guilty of this. I have written many posts detailing the bad time we had during our matching process, and although I have attempted to keep my posts balanced I’m not sure I have always managed to accomplish this. During our approval process we met only two social workers who we felt didn’t do their jobs to the best of their ability. Who didn’t do what

Introductions

Introductions have been an amazing experience. Wonderful, exciting, nerve wracking, and tiring. One thing is clear though, if you have a good foster family helping you things go a lot better than they otherwise would. Introductions are customised to the age of the child/children that you’re being introduced to. Younger ones tend to have a shorter period, older ones slightly longer. Sibling groups longer still but again depending on their age. They are structured so that the first half is based at the foster carer’s house with them showing you the routine that the child/children is currently in, and slowly

And so it begins…

Introductions are over and we are now in full Parental Responsibility mode. Before I say anything about the introductions in general I have a list of observations. 1. Get used to drinking formerly hot drinks cold, or only half of them, or not at all. Certainly get used to searching for randomly placed cups with full or half drunk drinks in them once the children are in bed. 2. Children somehow generate crumbs. Even if they have not had anything to eat, they are just there on the carpet inexplicably. 3. Forbidden things are nectar to children. Nothing is sacred,

Introducing Introductions

One year ago today we officially got accepted onto the adoption agency’s books, and entered The Process. One year later we met our children for the first time. From the outset it was clear that the foster carer had been preparing them for meeting us and the first words spoken, fairly unprompted, by one of the children was “It’s Daddy and Dad”. Definitely heart melting! We only spent a couple of hours with them today, and an amazing couple of hours it was. We saw a little bit of foster carer discipline which was very good to see, did a

Approval Panel

Yesterday was crunch day. The day that our assessment has been leading up to over the past few months – PANEL DAY! It doesn’t matter how much people tell you that Approval Panel isn’t as daunting as it seems, that we’ll be fine, that it’s not that bad etc, etc. Until you’re in there speaking to them you can’t help but envision some horrendous auditorium with people judging you from a distance. At the beginning of the assessment process you are told that Approval Panel is a group of up to 10 (yes TEN!) people from various fields including medical people,

Connections

It has been about 2 weeks since my last post and of the three things that I said we expected to happen in that time have happened. For the most part at least. We received the draft copy of the PAR. For those of you unfamiliar with what a PAR is, it is basically all the information that our social worker has gleaned from us and our references since the assessment process began written up into a report. We don’t get to see what our references have said about us only what we’ve said about ourselves and what has been

Matching & Marriage

This past week and bit has been eventful in some ways and really not in others. We attended some training on Tuesday about how the matching process works both from ours and the children’s perspectives. It seems like we’ve inadvertently already started this process even though we’re not approved yet. We have signed up to Children Who Wait and Be My Parent, both of which are online and paper magazines detailing the profiles of children who need adopting. We did this to get some idea of what profiles would look like rather than to find a child, but it’s difficult

The Final Countdown

The final assessment session (7) has been completed. We’re now on the countdown towards our approval panel date. The subjects of this session were “Identity” and (yet again) “Child Care”. Identity was a little bit woolly to begin with, and attempting to define what I considered to be my identity was odd. Eventually, to make it easier, we got asked “How would you describe yourself in a Two’s Company advert?”. I’m not sure “34 yr old man with GSOH seeks similar for family life” is really what she intended, I didn’t actually say that although we had a bit of

Not Just an Assessment

Yesterday everything became real. We aren’t just being assessed to be approved to be adoptive parents. We WILL become parents (subject to approval of course). Our social worker decided to do our profile before the Christmas break and sent it to us yesterday. It’s a really nice write up including a few pictures (which I hate because they have me in them!). I think it really captures us well and gives a good summary of what we have to offer. Along with that she sent us some children’s profiles from another authority who need to be placed away from their