We had always been intrigued by adoption and had sent off for
an information pack from our local authority years before. But we’d never quite
been ready to take the leap. I’ve since realised that there is no perfect time
to start a family and sometimes I wish we hadn’t thrown that information pack
in the recycling all those years ago. Anyway, I digress…
We sat in the lounge surrounded by other awkward looking
couples (and a few single people.) They had Tunnocks tea cakes – it was a good
sign! There was a presentation from some staff at Scottish Adoption – a couple
of whom we have gotten to know quite well – followed by the obligatory Q&A
session. An adopter also told her story. She didn’t sugar coat it – as a single
adopter, it had been hard for her. But when asked if she’d go through it again
she said ‘I’d have another one in a heartbeat if I could afford it.’ We left
feeling hopeful.
We deliberated for about a week and then sent off the
registration of interest form. We were soon invited for a meeting at the
agency’s office. In the meantime, we had also sent off for information packs
from every other agency in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as our local authority
and neighbouring local authority. We
were impressed by our agency’s after adoption support package and having read
many horror stories about adoption breakdown online, I knew how important this
was.
We went for our initial meeting in December 2017. I took a
day’s annual leave and we wandered around the Christmas markets. We had
pancakes from a van. It was a normal day in so many ways and yet it was the start
of something that would change our lives forever. The meeting went well. It was
a fact finding exercise and we liked what we heard. They seemed to like us too,
although there were concerns about my mental health history (which I’d been
completely honest about) and so I offered to do an early medical to clear up
any issues right at the start. This is normally done much later as part of the
home study process.
The medical is done at your own GP who goes through your
whole medical history and completes an intimidatingly large questionnaire. Our
GP was in full support of our application to adopt and yet the agency’s medical
advisor – who has the ultimate say – was not in agreement at first. We were
asked to go away for three months. For me to have more counselling and to
reflect on how my own experiences might reflect my ability to parent. It was
already March 2018 by the time we were told this. Three months had gone by and
we had achieved nothing. I did what they asked and we met again with the agency
in June who agreed we’d done enough to be able to continue and were booked in
for the next available preparation group in September.
The preparation group is a four day training course designed
to prepare you for the adoption process and give you more information about the
children. It covers trauma, loss, child development and attachment. I’m sure
you can imagine how cheery that was! We’d already done quite a lot of research
by this point so we probably didn’t get as much out of it as others would have,
but we did meet several couples and it’s been great keeping in touch with them
throughout the process. The course was over four Saturdays and at the end we
were given an official application form – once we sent this back, we would be
allocated a social worker and start our home study. We popped this in the post
and set off on one final big holiday (or so we thought) to Mexico, ready to
start a gruelling sixth month exploration in to every aspect of our lives when
we returned.
We got home and checked the pile of post hoping for a big
brown envelope amongst the bills and pizza menus. Nothing. We thought it was a
bit odd but by this point we had come to realise that things don’t always run
to plan and we gave them a few more days before chasing them up by phone. It was
not good news. They had decided they still had concerns over my mental health
and didn’t know whether we could proceed. I was asked if I would write a
reflective piece about my background and mental health problems and how I’d
overcome them. I did. It was 2000 words long. I sent it off and waited, knowing
I couldn’t do anymore. It was a dark time. We complained to the agency’s chief
exec and the day after sending in our complaint, we were finally allocated out
home study social worker.
A couple of weeks later, we met with our allocated social
worker for the first time. She seemed satisfied that what I’d done was going to
be enough and she had chatted with the agency’s medical advisory who also now
seemed prepared to write a medical report endorsing us to be adoptive parents.
Things were finally looking up.
We met with our social worker regularly from November to
February, usually for a couple of hours at a time, but sometimes longer. I
managed to schedule these meetings mostly on my allocated working from home day
and could make up the time in the evenings. I’m really lucky to work for such a
supportive employer who has moved heaven and earth for me throughout this
process.
The home study sessions were tough, although not as tough as
I had expected (little did we know there was a reason for this, but more on
that later.) You speak about every aspect of your lives, from your childhood to
your education, work history, health, support network and motivation to adopt. After
most sessions, we would also write up answers to questions which would form
part of our ‘Form F.’
Towards the end of the home study, we started to think about
the type of child we would be willing to adopt. And this is when you feel like
a piece of shit. Because there are certain conditions that we knew we wouldn’t
be able to cope with. You know that you would be doing a child a disservice by
becoming their parents when you can’t meet their needs properly, but still,
when faced with that dreaded tick list, you do feel like a horrible person when
you have to say no.
During this time, our social worker also met our referees.
We are very lucky to have an amazing support network and were spoiled for
choice when it came to choosing who to ask. In the end, I think we choose the
perfect people to really bring our report to life.
Once the meetings were done and references collected, our
social worker began to put together our form, which would be presented to the
adoption panel. The form must be with the panel two weeks before and
unfortunately, this coincided with the start of the Easter holidays. It meant
that our social worker was going to be off for the two weeks immediately
preceding our panel date. Because of this, we had very limited time to review
the draft document and make changes. In fact, it wasn’t even completely
finished by the time our social worker went off on leave, meaning the only
opportunity we got to see parts of it were after it was too late to change.
Upon reading the final version, we realised that the section on our childcare experience
seemed particularly weak. At this point, we couldn’t change the form, but we
could add our comments to the end, where an addendum is included for this
purpose. We added in a few paragraphs and off it went to the panel.
On 24 April 2019, we turned up at our agency’s offices for
our approval panel. Our panel was at 3pm and we had went out for lunch before
it to try and calm our nerves. The panel were running late and so it wasn’t
until 3:20ish before our social worker was called in (she goes in first and
then we are called in afterwards.) We were called in after about 25 minutes and
were asked a few questions which were extremely generic, such as how we had
found the process, what we had learned along the way etc. I was really nervous
but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. The panel were lovely and seemed
to be really rooting for us. Even the medical advisor (who had had concerns
originally) seemed supportive. After the questioning we were sent away while
the panel delivered their verdict to our social worker. It’s all a bit like the
apprentice and quite a strange experience. Our social worker appeared about
five minutes later to tell us we had received a unanimous yes from all members
of the panel. Yay! Happy days. (Well, it was, for 13 days.)
We were given access to Linkmaker the very next day. This is
a national database of children waiting to be adopted. We created a profile and
by midday, it was live. Seeing the children started to make it feel more real,
but I must admit it is very strange, and I can see why some people are
uncomfortable with this method of family finding. We decided we would be
proactive in our search but wanted to have the weekend to decompress so we went
off to Belfast for the weekend and started to look at profiles on the Sunday
night. Shit was getting real!
I should point out that although we received an approval at
panel, panel can only actually make a recommendation. The final decision is
made by the agency decision maker, who has 14 days after panel to ratify the
decision. We received a call at 7:30pm on day thirteen from our social worker
asking if she could come and see us that night. Immediately, I knew it was bad
news, and I was right. She told us that the ADM did not agree with the panel’s
recommendation and would not be approving us as adopters. There were some gaps
in our form that she had questions about and needed further work done from us
before we could progress. This would mean parts of our form being rewritten
which would result in us going back to panel a second time.
And that takes us up to where we are now. We were given very
specific feedback from the ADM and have had some further sessions with our
social worker. With hindsight, it is now clear that our social worker didn’t
probe us enough during our home study sessions and so there were some areas
that had not been fully explored. Of course, we didn’t realise this, having
never seen another Form F before. We thought it was great! Our form is now in
the process of being rewritten and at the end of this month we will go back to
the same panel and wait an agonising fourteen days after that to find out if
we’ve done enough.
The last few weeks have been by far the toughest part of the
process. Everyone in our preparation group has now been approved and three of
those couples have been matched with children. It feels like the pain of
infertility all over again. Another loss we need to process. I try not to
compare our journey to others – I tell myself that there must be a reason for
this – but it’s hard not to when we know we could have been parents by now had
we been approved in the recommended six month timescale. We have tried to be
rational and work with the agency to get this resolved, but some days I just
feel so sad. Sad for us but also for my child to be, who might be in foster
care right now when they could be at home with their forever family. Hopefully
this is just a blip. A temporary bump in the road. But we’ve had so many of
those and it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that this will ever happen
for us. We so desperately want to become parents and we know we are up to the
job. We now just have to hope that we have done enough to convince the one
person that has the power to agree with us. I’ll keep you posted.
Update 4.7.19
So we went back to panel last week and received another
unanimous approval. The panel seemed impressed by our resilience and all the
additional work we had done. I think they had been half expecting us to just
walk away! We were told it could be 14 days before we heard the ADM’s verdict,
but luckily we were told 6 days later that we had been ratified and were now
officially approved adopters! (It was still the longest 6 days of my life.)
It’s taken a bit of time to sink in. We were scared to feel happy in case it
was taken away from us again. But we’re now starting to get excited about the
future. Exciting times lie ahead…
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