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

Linked

Let me rewind a few weeks back to before we were approved and when I wrote this: Connections. In it I wrote “Our social worker has also provided some information about another sibling group and that too sounds promising” but I haven’t mentioned anything since. The reason I hadn’t was because those children hadn’t yet been given a Placement Order meaning that they couldn’t be adopted but only kept in foster care until such time as they got one, which may not ever happen. We were approached by these siblings’ family finder social worker rather than the other way around,

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

Expecting Expectations

Stage 2 Adoption Assessment: Session 6. This one was difficult. Not insomuch as we had a problem with answering the questions, more to do with the feelings of guilt and self judgement when we answered them honestly. It was about what our expectations were from adoption (at least that’s how it was presented to us). Basically, this was the time when we started to apply the filter criteria of the type of children we think we would be able to cope with or not. That means we had to say no to certain groups of children for certain reasons, leaving

Adoption Motivations

Stage 2 Adoption Assessment: Session 5 What are our motivations to adopt? That was the key question to this session. It could have been a very short one with the answer of “we want to have a family” but it’s not as simple as that, and although that is the main underlying reason for us wanting to adopt it is not the clear cut, bottom line, black and white answer that it would appear to be. We were questioned about how long we have wanted to have children, why we were looking to adopt now and not earlier or later, which 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

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.