After putting our adoption journey on hold about 18 months ago, we finally felt ready to proceed with our quest to be a family. The initial initial visit had been so negative (not about us) that we needed time to think about exactly what sort of child(ren) were suitable for us.
Living overseas and going through a UK Voluntary Agency (VA) makes it a little different from the 'norm' and we were expecting a long day for our second 'initial' visit. The social worker (SW) flew out from the UK to spend a few hours with us. After collecting her from the hotel at 0915 in the morning, we spent the day chatting about ourselves, our hopes and dreams for the future and her talking about the children that were available for adoption.
SW was very well experienced and had reached a senior level in social work before her retirement and subsequent sessional worker status. She discussed a lot of the case histories she had worked on and their outcomes in great detail (obviously anonymous), and we had a real insight. It went so much better than the first initial visit, which made us totally doubt everything.
Eleven hours later we dropped her back at her hotel!!!! It was a long day and it was very mentally draining but we were now officially on the road to adoption and have been approved to go on the 4-day prep course in March. We can't wait!!
We know that it will be a really intense 4 days but we are very resilient and are eager to learn. We are hoping to eventually be approved for a sibling group of up to 3 children, aged either 0-5 or 0-7 years.
The home study (which will last up to 8 months) will commence after we have completed the prep course, and been allocated a new SW, who will see us through to the approval panel. One thing that both my husband (DH) and I need to do before then is to have some current childcare experience, so I am hoping to join the Rainbows (aged 5-7) as a helper and DH will enquire about helping at the local youth club (aged 8+).
I am hoping to update this blog as I have new information or news.
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