Going for matching panel!

Two weeks ago we had a meeting at home with a little girls SW, the Local Authority 'Family Finding' SW and a 'Link' SW (our own SW was on holiday).

We started the meeting by asking them how she was developing.  They told us that she is healthy, she eats well (everything!) and sleeps all the way through the night, she is not toilet trained.  When she was initially placed with her Foster Carer she was a bit 'manic' and had a good number of tantrums (normal for 2 year olds?!?!)  but they told us that she has calmed down a lot and the tantrums are less frequent.  She can sit still and concentrate on an activity.  She really loves to listen to music and to dance.  She was described as a 'girly girl'; a lover of all things pink!  The SW's lit up when they talked about her and described her as being a really adorable child.

She lives with other chidlren in the FC home and she has formed strong attachments with her carer and the other children.  They told us that she is still having contact with her birth parents and that a 'farewell contact' is planned for coming weeks.  They told us that the BP's want direct contact after she is placed for adoption.  We are very open to this, but thinking about how this will work / when it will be is difficult for us.   It's great that she is able to form attachments but I instantly felt sad for her because moving from her FC's into a placement will be more losses for such a little child to have to go through and make sense of.

We had prepared a little fact sheet for the SW's containing lots of information about how we felt we could meet her needs on the big issues; (permanence, contact with her Birth Family, cultural heritage, attachment, trauma and future development).  They seemed impressed by what we had to offer.  They asked us a good few questions, mostly around our plans for Adoption Leave and our support networks.  They asked us why we wanted to be matched with this child - we simply told them that she seemed to be the right child for our family and that we can meet her needs, plus she was the only profile we had read that left us feeling that we wanted more. We showed them around the house and they all seemed very happy with the possible options for her bedroom and liked the garden space outside for playing.

Then they sat us down and showed us two recent photographs.  We had seen two photographs, dated when she was 14 months and another when she was 17 months old.  She is now 31 months so it was good to see a more recent photo.  She is beautiful. They showed us a few short video clips on the laptop, about 10 short clips taken on the SW cameraphone.  She was smiling, happy, chatting away and watching music videos on the TV (she has a love of RnB) and clearly knows what she likes and what she doesn't!! She did a cute little 'leg wiggle' dance, at which point  we all started laughing!

They left us and we both felt that we were 100% clear we wanted to go ahead, but we needed to think carefully about some big issues e.g. contact etc.  We waited a couple of days to hear back but they had all agreed that they wanted to go for a match with this little girl and this was confirmed at the LAC meeting the following day.

So, this week we have been completing various things for the matching paperwork to be submitted on Monday.  We have read the Adoption Support Plan and the Adoption Placement Report and yesterday everything was finalised, so we are set for matching panel on May 8th!

So much to get our heads around, having felt like things were moving slowly, since we were approved just a month ago, we are going to matching panel!

Until next time

Hannah & Ruth x x x x