The Stork Is Getting Closer...

This morning we had a home visit from the placing Local Authority. After answering a couple of their questions and asking a few of our own we gave a short tour of our home, pointed out our plans for a nursery and chatted more about the baby's health/background/birth family history.

They seemed very openly positive about the match and so our Social Worker asked if they had already reached a decision and if they were able to tell us there and then. They had and they were... they said there and then that they wanted to go ahead with the match! We were both a little overwhelmed at just what that meant. We are going to be parents and there is a beautiful baby boy waiting to be our son! They had brought a short DVD with them for us to watch... it was just surreal, for the very first time we sat and watched our baby moving on the TV screen. Crazy.

Our Social Worker was quick to enquire about dates for matching panel and to make a plan for the next steps and it seems they already had a timeframe in mind - almost as though they knew we were the right family before the met us in person. Our little boy is just 8 months old so they are keen to have him with his 'forever family' ahead of his first Christmas and birthday in January - OMG... how exciting. This is the most wonderful Christmas present we could have wished for!

So a matching panel date is set for early November, with a post-panel planning meeting the next day and introduction dates will be scheduled to begin a weeks after, meaning he should be with us by the end of November. We can't quite believe we only began our prop group training in January; just five day after our baby was born.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a HUGE thank you to our Social Worker and the team at Ealing Council's Child Placement team who have all been so amazing and made our adoption journey so far very slick and professional.

Wow... So much to plan for now!

Linked!?

After an unbelievably anxious two weeks waiting to hear if we would be chosen by the placement team for a home visit we found out today that it was good news! Out of the three families we had been shortlisted with we have been chosen as the first choice family to meet and we have been told that they have not picked a 2nd family (which we are hoping is great news!).

We were both SO excited to receive the call today, it felt like a huge weight lifted off our shoulders. My fiancée is away for work so we haven't been able to celebrate the news together but this evening was the monthly New Family Social drinks meet-up in Soho so it was lovely to be around fellow adopters and share the news.

So, we have a home visit scheduled now with the child placement team as well as our social worker for early next week - so excited/nervous/excited/anxious! Some sources say this step is just a formality whilst others say it's like another mini home study and feels interrogating so we shall see - I guess it depends on the LA and SW. Either way I'll post as soon as we hear next week and let you know :-)

We are trying really hard not to get our hopes up and also trying not to keep looking at the photos of the child but it's so hard - also because we don't want to miss out on feeling this excitement if it is good news and we are matched. Emotions are certainly running high at the moment it's just a case of trying to keep focused on work and other things and hope for the best! But we do have a good feeling - positive thinking eh!

So I guess this means we are now linked?! Keeping everything crossed for a good home visit :-)

Shortlisted

It's been really nice over the last few months to make friends with other couples in the same situation as us. Not only is it lovely for us to expand our social circle but we feel like it's going to be really great for all of our children to have lots of friends with same sex parents too. This will really help to normalise our family life and give them the confidence to confront any negativity towards them at school and from their peers.

We are in the middle of house hunting at the moment in preparation for our new larger family. We currently own a two bedroom garden flat which would be ample for a young family, even if we were to be matched with a sibling group. However we really would like a larger family home with a big garden for the dogs (as well as the children) and spare rooms for family to visit and stay with us. We have seen a few places a bit further out of town than our current place (we are looking to get more house for our money) and last weekend we made an offer which was accepted - so we are now waiting for the vendors to negotiate on the place they are hoping to buy.

On the Family Finding front, our spreadsheet now lists 26 children! It's felt like a really slow summer with our Social Worker (SW) and many of the SW's looking after the children on our table being on holiday, however we managed to pull in full CPR reports for four of the children we were interested in and spent a full evening reading thought them all.

There was one profile that really stood out for us. I'm reluctant to say this child immediately felt like 'the one' because I'm fully aware how the process works and have to prepare mentally for the very realistic chance that he may not be, but we had a very good feeling and were both really keen to let all parties know we wanted to be considered and progress. As our SW was on holiday we decided to call the child’s SW directly and let her know how keen we were to be considered as a suitable match for this child and offer a few key benefits and criteria that we felt made us a perfect match based on our profile and what we had read in the child’s.

This phone call and direct approach really helped and we came away with a very good feeling about it as the lady enthused about us as potential candidates. I should say this match actually came though via the National Adoption Register based on our mixed heritage/culture matching the child’s as well as our search criteria. We received a phone call from the child's local authority a week ago saying that we have been short-listed! Amazing news... this is the furthest we have been so far in the process. This means that that the local authority (LA) have selected three families out of the profiles they have received and there will be a meeting next week to choose just 1 or 2 of us to make a home visit to. We are so excited but also very very anxious at the moment. It's fabulous to have been short-listed but being so near and yet so far makes it all the more terrifying. I'll keep you posted.

It's worth mentioning to any potential adopters reading my blog that the telephone conversation we made to this LA was not the first. A couple of weeks ago I received a call completely out of the blue from another child’s SW who was unable to reach our SW due to her being on holiday and wanted to run a few things by me and get a better picture of us as a couple. I was totally not expecting the call and as I was at work at the time it really threw me. I had to leave the office to speak to her and wasn't at all prepared to answer the kind of questions she asked - I said to my partner and our SW that it felt like being back at panel all over again.

On the plus side thought it felt really good to be able to 'sell ourselves' directly and get a bit of personality across in persona rather than through a printed document. There was also another LA who we hadn't heard anything back from after making an initial enquiry via Be My Parent who I decided to call and am really glad I did – they had misplaced our profile during an office move and again she was able to give me loads of info on the child in question and I was able to tell her more about us, our lifestyle, situation and search. So I guess my point is that there is a lot we can do to focus the 'Family Finding' search ourselves and be proactive to find answers to questions, get more information and present ourselves direct to SW's and LA's – don't be afraid to pick up the phone and speak to people in person. The process is inherently slow anyway, so if there is something you can do to speed it up just do it!

We were also lucky enough to come across a list of over 450 email addresses this month for LA's and SW's across the country so if the match we have been short-listed for doesn't bare fruit (or child!) we are on standby to spam the UK with our profile once more whilst we wait for the stork.