Over the past year or two there has been a lot of governmental attention given to adoption and the adoption process. Most significantly the decision to streamline the approval process has greatly reduced the amount of time it takes for a prospective adopter to be approved. This was billed as being necessary because there weren’t enough adopters coming through in order to place the children requiring permanent homes, and those that were were taking too long to be approved. In part this was due to the sheer level of bureaucracy involved and, in my opinion, the lack of structure to the
Tag: Adoption Process
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
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
The Interrogation?
Stage 2 Adoption Assessment: Session 4 – a one on one interview with the social worker. This was the first session where I felt a bit anxious beforehand. I was fine until OH (who had his the day before mine) told me a couple of the questions that he was asked. My response being “I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to answer those questions”, and I still didn’t when I was inevitably asked them. The social worker had a set of questions to ask and talk around, but fortunately it was nothing like the interrogation that I feared it
Lifestyle Assessment
Adoption Stage 2 Assessment Session 3 – this was far more innocuous than I thought it was going to be. Nothing controversial and nothing even remotely presumptuous about how we live our lives. We were asked about how we spend our evenings, what our favourite films, music and books were and that kind of thing. We also discussed our interests and skills and how we could use them in relation to a child. During this I may have upset the social worker by revealing that the first time she visited with her supervising social worker I had baked a cake for
Stage 2 Assessment – Session 2
Education, Work, Drugs, Smoking and Alcohol – a heady mix for our second session with the social worker! We talked through our education and how we found school in general, including whether we were bullied and how we handled it, and how that would translate into dealing with the bullying of a child of our own. We were also asked about what our general attitude to education was and how we would be able to support a child academically and beyond. I think our answers were quite good for this as we’ve got a reasonable mix of academia and practicality
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.
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
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
