The importance of health

Health is a massive issue for potential adopters to consider.  Any potential adopters know that medical 'well-being' comes as no guarantee from a placement, but then again the same can be said to be true of birth parents and their children. In our home assessment we were asked to really consider the realities that we could face with our own future adopted child/ren and our own capabilties as parents-to-be.

We read Raina's Child Permanence Report (CPR) .....only about a hundred or more times (!) and know that she does seem to be currently meeting all her milestones and developing well.  In the initial family finder stage we read a few CPR's and they did all seem to contain, somewhere within the text of the report the following sentence "...potential carers must be prepared to accept the unknown in terms of X's future development."

As part of the process we went through in deciding whether we were the right parents for Raina, we have read all the medical information complied by her SW and done our own research. (Trying not to be totally freaked out by what is available on the Internet!!)   We have read the medical reports completed on Raina at the hosptial when she was born and know that unfortunately she was poorly when she was born and she had some health problems caused by pre-natal exposure to a number of things.   She seems to have been quite a resilient little girl and is very sociable and bright, but there were some concerns reported recently about her speech being delayed.

A while back we requested a meeting with Raina's local authority LAC Doctor and we managed to get our wish this week. This has proven to be really positive and has put our minds to rest on a few things and also given us some helpful food for thought.

In the past year or so, we have already purchased a few useful books from BAAF (British Association for Adoption and Fostering) which have helped us at various points of the process so far.  This week we also discovered they have a range of books in their 'Parenting Matters' series; which cover a lot of the key issues for adopters that we certainly need to understand more of, now we know about our 'child to be's'  health background.

http://www.baaf.org.uk/bookshop/book_parentingmatters

So we are off to do some light reading!

Hannah & Ruth