The answer, it would seems is Yes.
We are both feeling the frustrations of the assessment process, as it rolls onto being almost 12 months.....still waiting to go to Approval Panel.
We were told in December that our SW had seen a child in the Local Authority, and had her 'eye on them' for a while, whilst she was waiting for us to finish our sessions with the Post Adoption Centre.
We were told in December that we could be going to panel for approval AND matching in early January. We were told about the child and allowed to read their profile (age, features, hobbies and personailty) which made this child 'come alive' in our minds.
Just before Christmas came the news that the story had changed considerably.....we were not going to be approved in early January as our report would not be ready. We were also told that we could not see a photo of the child, or read their Placement Report because we were not approved.
This shift was very hard to swallow and we can only speculate about the internal reasons for this decision within the LA. We know that prospective adopters are approved and matched at the same time frequently, so the LA reasoning that they could not share info with us 'due to confidentialty' seems like an oddity to us.
Since then the approval panel has beome our only focus. The date has been changing and now we are looking into March instead. We have had to 'forget' about this child and this has been a strange thing to do but in a way we are glad we hadn't seen a photo and then be told 'no', as our attachments would have been 100% stronger.
The reason for delay????......It would seem that we have been 'too honest' with our assessing SW, which has raised a few eyebrows and questions. It would seem that if you keep your skeletons in the closet you stand a better chance of being approved quicker?!? We didn't start this process to get it done as quickly as possible, but to be as thorough as possible and get it right; for us and our children when they are placed with us.
We were told recently that we would have to have a 'Second Opinion Social Worker' meeting. We were advised that this should not necessarily be seen as a second opinion of us; but of the recommendations our SW was making. It was really nerve-wracking and hard to not feel like everything was hanging on this meeting. She asked us the most difficult questions about the parts of our assessment we had been most 'honest' about. She seemed nice but she didn't give us any kind of feedback after the meeting. We waited two days to hear back from our SW on how this visit had gone, in which time we were envisaging all sorts, even being told by our Assessing LA that they no longer wanted to approve us.
The good news was that the Second Opinion SW has endorsed what our SW is saying, so that's one more hurdle we have overcome.
We are both honest and we are proud of who we are; what we have done and the reasons for the decisions we have made in our lives. We are confident that we can be good adoptive parents, we know we will find it hard but really do believe that our relationship is stable enough to manage and that we have the skills and approach required.
All of this means lots of intense and last minute meetings, homework and references from us and other people in our lives as we keep going in this marathon!!!
It's hard not to get despondent about it all, but we will keep going and hope that Approval is not that much further around the corner.
Ruth & Hannah x x x
