Waiting For Panel

So here we are... only seven days away from going to panel to be approved officially as adopters. This is a significant milestone in our journey and after reading other blogs from members of New Family Social and finding them really useful I decided that now is the time to start documenting our own journey.

Going to panel is only a milestone however, not the start of our journey. The posts below reflect on the 'story so far' and bring things up to date. You will see throughout this blog I'm likening the various stages to The X-Factor as it feels very similar... from first audition, to boot camp, to judges (at our) houses, to the live finals and finally (hopefully!) the record contract! This of this blog as my 'Xtra Factor' highlights show!

My next entry will be on Monday 6th June post-panel when we will find out if we have made it through to the next stage... the 'Live Shows' (Family Finding!)


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NB: All posts prior to this one were written retrospectively and posted today, thought I have time-stamped them with the actual dates for archiving.

The Assesment Begins / Judges Houses

Who would it be? Would we click immediately or would our relationship be awkward and official? We had met a number of the Adoption team now since the 'Pink Families' event in May last year and everyone seemed lovely so it wasn't a really big issue for us. At the preparation course there was one social worker in particular who we both really took a shine to and did hope we might get her as our social worker.

We have heard quite a few horror stories about bad social workers from various sources, even at the Ealing event last year they themselves openly said that it can happen sometimes a social worker just doesn't click with a prospective couple and it's ok to say so and ask for another. Some friends of ours who had been through the process a year before us had told us how the first social worker they had didn't bother to do any of the written assessment and they had to write their own for panel!

Anyway, we opened the door after another few days of cleaning, buying flowers, grooming the dogs, spraying airfreshener everywhere and stocking up on cake/coffee/snacks (anyone would think we were going on 'Come Dine With Me') to the lady who was to be our social worker. For some reason one feels the need to give a slightly false sense of perfection but I guess it's normal. There as so many factors in the process that you can't control that I think we take the parts we can control and want to make sure we have done everything we can to show the type of home we want to offer a child. God knows why, I'm sure as soon as a child come to live here the place will never look the same again!! 

She informed us at the very start of the meeting that she works in 'post adoption care' but because the department is short of social workers at the moment she would be taking our initial home visits and starting the assessment but may not be the one who takes us all the way to panel. We found this a little difficult to digest because the whole point of the assessment and panel presentation is that the social worker spends a long time with you and builds up a picture of you so that they can confidently present you to the panel armed with full knowledge and back-stories to answer any awkward 'off-topic' questions the panel decide to throw at her. understand because. Anyway, there was no need to worry too much as the following week she informed us that she has been given permission to stay with our case and be our social forker for panel and beyond! We have gotten on really well with her so it's great to know that she will be there to share the journey with us.

The next thing to do was schedule the rest of our home visits. The preparation course had managed our expectations to think that this stage, 'the assessment' was going to take about eight months, with bi-monthly visits for the duration. However in reality we were booking weekly meetings, sometimes even two a week. All three of us had our diaries out and pencilled the dates in. She then looks at the next panel dates and checked our availability for theses. We were both a little shock I think at the speed this stage was going to progress at. There was a date mentioned in April, which we would have finished our assessment in time for but may not have allowed enough time to get the CRB check form back for as apparently these can take up to ten weeks to return. We were not able to make the date suggested in May as my partner was going to be away for work so we settled on Monday 6th June... which seemed perfect. Enough time to digest the assessment but still sooner than the expected months where we thought we would be going to panel in October. So there we have it, a date set for panel, the whole things just keep feeling more and more real at each stage. The scary/exciting this is that in theory (and only in theory) we could be matched with a child in the summer?! And then again it could be next summer... or the summer after!

The five home (and work) visits were fine. At first they were really exciting, toward the end we started to feel we were going over the same ground but we are aware that our social worker needs to complete a very long report and has to be sure about all of the details. It did feel strange sometimes talking about yourself for three hours full and not asking the social worker any questions about her?! lol

Visits generally lasted three to four hours and after each one we were left with a bundle of paperwork to complete - which we generally did the same night whilst everything was fresh. The other thing to say is that we were really grateful to our social worker for agreeing to make our visits in the evening and early morning so not to interfere with work. We are well aware of the impact that children will have on our lives/work but whilst we can schedule things to not impact on work we were glad to. Some evenings we didn't finish till after 10pm and 11pm so we can't thanks her enough for giving that kind of time to us.

The visits themselves were very details, I won't go into them here but the BAAF book 'Pink Guide to Adoption' is a great resource for what to expect during assessment and covers all of the kind of questions you will be asked etc. Some visit were together and at the start we did meetings separately too where we covered our early lives, our own childhoods, previous relationships and education/careers etc. Then the bulk of the meetings together were more about our attitudes to parenting and how we would deal with certain situations.

So, five long sessions, loads of paperwork and a lot of coffee later we had finished our assesment and waitind for a couple of weeks whilst our social worker prepared her report. In the meantime she was also talking to the six references we had put forward (a couple of time, for those references with children she actually came to our home on a Sunday and observed us interacting with their children) and applied for our CRB checks, we also had to visit the doctor and complete a full medical which included getting a blood test from the hospital.

The report was finally sent to us to for our review... all 52 pages of it! Apart from a couple of typo's which we corrected we were pretty happy with everything she had written and felt confident that it was a great, comprehensive report to present to panel (assuming they don't fall asleep before page 52!).

Preparation Course / Boot Camp

Following our first home visit we must have waited about ten days before we heard back from Ealing. It was quit a nerve racking wait, given that someone you have never met is taking notes on you and during a three hour visit is making a decision about weather you are fit to parent a child so a lot was resting on this next stage.

When we did hear back we were delighted to be accepted by Ealing Council and put forward for the next stage of the 'competition'... we were off to Boot Camp (or preparation course to those in the business!) The next course was due to start at the end of January 2011 so we had nothing else to do over Christmas except wait. The course would be three full days long, ours was Thursday, Friday and Monday and would cover a wide range of areas in child development, the adoption process in general, dealing with children from difficult backgrounds, attachment theory, the adoption triangle, the effects of drug and alcohol abuse etc. etc. etc.

The course took place at a local cricket club (which could have benefited from some central heating!) and was a really lovely supportive environment to share with other perspective adopters. Everyone felt really relaxed and was able to comfortable ask questions, benefit from other peoples ideas and experience and learn more about the process together. We felt very reassured by the team at Ealing and they had obviously had a great response to their 'Pink Families' Campaign because we were not the only gay couple on the course, in fact the group was made up of three heterosexual couple, three gay couples and a single gay adopter... power to the gays!  

The idea of the course is that everyone can build up a circle of contact and friends who are all going through the process together and share thought and stay in touch beyond the preparation course and this has certainly been the case. We have in fact since the course met up with one couple for lunch since and are planning to meet again along with one of the other couples in a few weeks time.

Towards the end of the three days, still inspired and determined to continue and keen to find out what we had to do next to keep things moving at the surprising speed they had been so far. On the final day we were given another big information pack which contained amongst other notes and handouts the form the needed to fill in in order to continue to the next round. In addition the course leaders from the adoption team would compile their thoughts and decide if they were happy for us to continue. Keen as ever we completed the form the next day and submitted it by email that evening.

It was the following Friday that we found out that they had assigned a social worker to us and our 'home visits' were about to start! Bring on Judges Houses... or judges in our house/s?!

The Application / 1st Audition

November 2010 I would say was the first significant step in our journey. I sent the email to Ealing Council to say that after the two events we had been to we felt ready to start the process and would like to officially apply to become adopters. We waited, and waited and didn't hear anything for a week. Which in hindsight is not long at all when you are dealing with a busy department which is no doubt under staffed and under preassue but when you are sending such a life changing email it's hard to think about anything else. All sorts of things go through your mind (or my own paranoid mind) and you wonder "Is it me?", "Is it because we are gay?"... all sorts of things. So I decided to pick up the phone and check if they had even received my email. The lady I spoke to was very apologetic and assured me that we would get a call and a letter within the next few days to arrange a time for a social worker to make a home visit.

So they had our application and this was it, we were going to formally start the ball rolling with a home visit. This made the whole thing even more real and felt really nice to get getting started. Over the past few weeks, well since May I guess we had discussed parenting a handful of times every week, all the time reinforcing our want to have children now whilst we are both young. We have heard through all of the book that we have read, websites we have trawled and events we had been to just how long the whole process can take so even though we are both relatively young adopter we are of the opinion that if it does take three plus years we definitely want to get the ball rolling now.

We had a date and were so excited in the days before the visit just dying to get started. Not rushing things and expecting too much too soon is one of the biggest expectations that you have to manage with the adoption process, everyone's is always reminding you how long things can take even if you are prepared and have all of your paperwork completed on time you are always waiting for some council office, a social worker or a panel worker to do their bit - but that doesn't really go very far when you are embarking on such an exciting life-changing journey and it's hard not to get a little carried away and swept up in it. In fact it's hard to think about anything else in the run up to each milestone. Anyway, the day before she came we cleaned the house from top to bottom, bought flowers, fresh coffee and croissants which I left in the oven on a tray to heat in advance.

One of the first things the social worker did when she arrived was to go through and fill in a first application form with us. When she got to taking down our date of birth I mentioned about the information evening and feeling that we were the youngest couple there by a good stretch - I asked her if this could be a potential issue in presenting us to the adoption panel and she made a good point which put my mind at rest... the majority of heterosexual couples who adopt come to adoption as a 'Plan B', after trying for many years to get pregnant themselves, where as gay couples, especially gay men come to the conclusion a lot sooner that having a biological child isn't an option for them and so are ready to visit adoption a lot sooner.

The rest of the form consisted of lots of general questions - she wasn't there to probe too deeply, that would come with future home visits if we were accepted by the authority as 'potential adopters'. The purpose of this visit was just to take down the basics that she would then take back to the team before deciding to take our application further. We answered basic questions about our attitude towards parenting, our own childhoods and family structure, what we do for a living, how much we earn, how long we have been together and that kind of thing. I say basic questions, it was still quite a long visit - she arrived at 9am and didn't leave till after 12pm, which was something we have now come to expect with home visits!

We got on really well with this social worker as she was one of those speaking at the 'Pink Families' event we went along to so we were really pleased when she turned up at the door. We were actually hoping that she might be our social worker but that idea was quickly finished when she declared that she was actually leaving after Christmas to move to Thailand! Nevermind.

The other really good thing for us is that she got on really well with Jeffrey and Andrew our little dogs. It's really important for us that the social workers during this process liked the boys (our canine children!) and see how gentle and loving they are and on this visit the both (after the initial barking to welcome visitors) lay down and went to sleep on her! She reassured us again here agreeing that pets can really make a home and it's a nice thing to be able to say to children who you are matched with that there are two little doggies at their new home etc.

It wasn't until we closed the door that I remembered the croissants were still in the oven!!

Alternative Families

The summer came and went and we were both rally busy with work so didn't really have time to re-visit the children thing. My fiancée was enrolling on a part-time MBA course and my business was keeping me incredibly busy and also rather stressed having had to pursue legal action against two clients in the same month. One thing I do remember about last summer was watching a documentary on Channel 4, the latest of their 'shock docs' called My Weird & Wonderful Family. Ten years ago Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow made history by fathering twins via surrogacy and over the years have added to their family in the same way. An option which seemed to work for them.

We heard about the Alternative Families Show which takes place each year in Covent Garden and decided to go along and suss things out. We registered in advance for a couple of the seminars. Being a mixed-race couple we were really interested in international adoption and keen to find out if adopting from India would be a possibility. We also booked for a seminar on surrogacy to find out more about that as a potential avenue.

The event was really great - there were a whole host of local authorities there promoting their adoption services, as well as charities such as Action for Children and Barnardos. Stonewall and BAAF also had a big presence. It was a great chance to ask loads of questions and speak to people already perusing the different options to find out what was best for us.

The seminar on International adoption reinforced a lot of what we had already been reading online in that the red tape many Asian countries has surrounding gay adoption meant that India wouldn't be a viable option for us. My partner as an Indian national would have to adopt as a single parent. Plus with running my business the time we would have to spend out of the country duration the adoption meant this just wasn't a viable option for us.

The other seminar we signed up for was about Surrogacy and guess who the speakers were? The Drewitt-Barlows! Whilst their story is inspiring and their children are adorable it just didn't feel right for us. Surragocy is a very costly road to go down given that its not legal in the UK so will almost certainly involve lots of travel, a fee for the surrogate mother and usually the agency fee, all in all you are looking at the best part of £100k and upwards. Their presentation was followed by a sales pitch from a US agency who just didn't seem right from the start. The CEO was their to speak and sell the benefits of their service which fair enough sounded very organised and well structured to protect the client, cover legal loop holes and audition potential surrogate mothers the whole thing just seems a little cold and business like and not right for us.

We left that in October feeling certain that adoption was the route we wanted to take. Aside from the fact the it wasn't going to cost us £100k we both really like to concept of giving a child who is without parents a home, a stable family life and all of our love and support.

Pink Families

Our adoption journey began in April 2010. My fiancée and and I had been together four and a half years and over the course of our relationship had always discussed that we both wanted to have children at some point in the future - I guess we both kind of assumed that this would be in the distant future, at least towards the end of our thirties and really thought no more about it.

I remember coming home from work one day and he told me that he had seen an advert in Attitude Magazine from Ealing Council promoting a 'Pink Families' campaign to encourage potential LGBT foster carers and adopters to come forward with the support of a new 'forward thinking' open minded local authority to help combat any red tape misconceptions that may have previously been associated with same-sex parenting and help sell the benefits that we have to offer as parents. Anyway, he had called the number on the ad and registered our interest - at this stage we both agreed we just wanted to go along and find out more.

It was the end of May when we went along to the town hall one evening after work. After signing in, recieveing our complementary pink bags, mugs and pens we made a b-line for the coffee and nibbles - we had come straight from work and were starving so we certainly got our council tax worth! The evening was fantastic. After a short introduction from some of the team at Ealing and then the obligatory slide-show they had lined up a great selection of speakers, all with really inspiring stories to tell. Some were foster carers, some were in the middle of the adoption process, some had recently had children placed with them and others had adopted a few years ago and now had older children.

I just remember sitting there and thinking "this can actually happen for us". Until that night the prospect of actually becoming parents was only a distant wish for the future and I don't think either of us had given much thought to how we would make it happen. I was struck by the fact that we seemed the youngest couple at the event by far, I was 25 at the time and my finacee 29, compared to the other couples who seemed late 30's. We are keen to parent children whilst we are young still, we want our time with them to be full of energy and we also want to keep up with them! Also, my own mother was just a couple of years younger than me when I was born and we are now able to share a real friendship and the age gap isn't as large as that between a lot of my firneds and their parents and indeed my partner and his parents who are now in their 70's. We left the town hall (with another Voulevant in hand) and made for the car. We were both so inspired by the evening we knew that having children was now definitely something we both really wanted. We just needed to decide when and how... we still hadn't ruled out surragacy. This was something we needed to investigate.