Welcome to our latest blog by one real-life adoptive mum who so far has shared with us

Panel brings together a group of individuals with adoption experience and expertise who discuss the application and make a recommendation as to whether the applicant should be approved.

Finally, the day we had been building up to for six months was upon us and our nerves and excitement levels were high. In fact, my tummy has gone all fluttery just thinking about it as I type these words nearly three years later.

Our Panel was in the afternoon, and it was hard to settle too much that morning!

The good thing to remember about going to Panel is that it is designed NOT to be full of surprises – if things have been done properly there really shouldn’t be any dramatic plot twists at this stage. As you go through Stage 2 with your Assessing Social Worker (ASW) they will be very clear with you about what they are thinking in terms of their recommendations, what they have reservations about, and as the process progresses, if and how they have revised their opinions.

Panel’s role

Having read your Prospective Adopters Report (PAR) it’s the Panel’s job to ask you (and your ASW) any questions they have and then make a recommendation as to whether you should (or shouldn’t) be accepted as Prospective Adopters – this recommendation then goes to the Agency Decision Maker (ADM) who then reads their recommendation and decides whether or not to uphold it.

Comparing it to a hand of cards – everything is out on the table. As the date for Panel approaches you read your PAR and have a chance to chat it through with your ASW so you know exactly what the Panel members are reading about you!

A daunting meeting

Having said all that, you still don’t know what they will make of you, and the meeting itself is a little daunting if only because it is an unknown. Here are the reflections we jotted down straight after our Panel with a few added details for clarity.

On arrival we were met by our ASW and taken into a room to wait with her. Quite a wait. I knitted and we attempted to chat with our ASW – although none of us were very conversational. All three of us were a bit nervous – sort of jumpy – listening out and turning round at the sound of doors opening or people approaching, and my husband and I were both rather emotionally full. Our ASW read through her notes. At last, the Panel Chair and Advisor came in and introduced themselves and gave us our questions – it was all very friendly.

Sometimes the Panel like to meet with the ASW without the Prospective Adopters, but on this occasion they didn’t feel this was necessary, so we prepped the questions together and then went in.

On entering the room for Panel, we sat with our ASW on one side of a set of tables with the Panel sitting around the other side – it wasn’t a massive room and was quite full.

Who was there:

The Panel introduced themselves – 1 x independent, 3 x staff (Children’s Services) including our first ever Social Worker and another familiar face from a training day. Also present was the Chair, the minute taker and the Advisor.

Initial questions:

We were asked about our experience of the process, how we had found the training and asked to give feedback on our ASW. Our ASW also fed back on the process from her point of view. We were also asked why we had chosen to go through the Council as opposed to another agency. It was made clear that they really did want our feedback here as they always want to be improving the service.

Questions specific to us (which we had been given in the waiting room earlier):

We had been given 4 questions – none of which came out of leftfield. All in all, it was a positive, affirming atmosphere. We then left the room – just time for a loo trip before called back in.

The Panel members went round the table starting with the Chair to each give their recommendation.

We received a unanimous recommendation to be approved!

After panel

We had a brief, but happy chat with our ASW then headed off to a nearby cafe, to come back down to earth over a game of cards and a debrief chat (which is when we made these notes). We let a few people know via texts, the children came in and we had a lovely family meal together to celebrate.

We have a photo from that meal up in our kitchen and it is also in our little one’s Life Story Book. I love that photo because it captures a moment of celebration – we were as ready as we could be.

The embryo of the idea of adoption had developed through training, assessment, planning, preparing, time and beautiful dreaming and now we were at full term. Heavily expectant. But unlike a biological pregnancy, our journey from conception to readiness was not coincident with our daughter’s journey home.

Looking back, I now know, that while we were arriving at that point of readiness, all prepared for the idea of our little one; her little unborn self was doing just what it is designed to do – preparing for life with her birth family. She was still many months off the readiness that we were celebrating in that photo and even then the readiness would be one imposed on her via a process of court orders and the plans of Children’s Services.

Not that I could have told you any of this at the time, but now, looking back, I can identify alongside the exhilaration and sense of arrival, a slight note of grief. A sadness at the disconnection between our story and the story of our little one – stories that my mummy-heart yearned to intertwine. It wasn’t a raw, painful, obvious grief – just a slight note within the many other flavours of the experience. One thread in the beautiful tapestry of adoptive parenting.

Approval – The final stamp

One week after Panel we heard from our ASW that the Agency Decision Maker agreed with the Panel’s recommendation and that we were officially Approved Prospective Adopters.

We purchased a few items that we had chosen but had been waiting until we got the go ahead to actually order – definitely a bit of nesting going on! The blanket was completed, and the preparations continued as we waited for the call!

A note from Adopt Coast to Coast

Notes from Adopt Coast to Coast: A huge thank you to our adopter for sharing their own experiences of adoption. Please note no two adoption stories are the same and experiences and timescales will vary for each family – if you’d like to find out more about adoption and discuss your own circumstances please get in touch now. 

If you’d like to find out more about adoption and discuss your own circumstances, please get in touch now.

If you want to find out more why not come along to an information event or one-to-one appointment?

Alternatively you could make an enquiry and one of our friendly team will give you a call to discuss your own circumstances and answer any questions you might have.

In the fourth instalment of our blog, our adoptive mum tells us all about her experiences of Stage 2 of her adoption journey. Read about Stage 1 in her previous post.

Prospective Adopters Report

Our form expressing our wish to proceed to Stage 2 was received by our Local Authority on December 5th. For Stage 2 the Local Authority have 16 weeks/4 months in which to:

• Complete the assessment – this involved our Assessing Social Worker (ASW) meeting up with us almost every week – sometimes together as a couple and sometimes as individuals over a period of a couple of month
• Write our Prospective Adopters Report (PAR)
• Send the PAR off to the Panel at least five days before Panel
• Hold Panel – which will then send their recommendation to the Agency Decision Maker
• Give the Agency Decision Maker (ADM) seven working days to review the case and make their final decision on whether to approve you or not

Panel

As you can see, Stage 2 is all about getting ready for Panel and the main activity during Stage 2 is a series of meetings with your ASW. During these meetings they get to know all about you and then use that information to write up your PAR. This report then gets read by all the members of the Panel prior to them interviewing you. More detail on what it was like to go through Panel will be in my next post, but basically you appear with your ASW before a Panel of people with various connections to and expertise in adoption.

We were given the date for our Panel quite early on in Stage 2 and it was this date that loomed large in our minds and hearts through the next couple of months.

We had weekly meetings with our Assessing Social Worker (ASW) starting in December and then from early January through to March. These meetings followed a clear schedule – both in terms of times and topics to be discussed – and went through similar subjects to those covered in the workbook. Our ASW didn’t really refer to the workbooks – but rather worked through her list of things to cover in conversation with us – taking notes all the time.

Of course, having done the thinking as we filled out the workbooks, it meant we had thought through lots of the sorts of issues she raised which was definitely better than having to think on the spot. Also, when it came to writing our Prospective Adopters Report (PARs) she was able to refer to them and cut and paste as was appropriate.

We built up a really good relationship with our ASW and felt very comfortable with her. We never felt like we were having to guess what she was thinking and she was very honest when she had concerns.

For example, we were wanting to be approved to adopt siblings and also to be considered for Fostering for Adoption*. Our ASW was not convinced that either of these was right for our family and openly discussed this with us early on. By the time the report was written she had changed her mind regarding Fostering for Adoption, but she maintained her thinking re: the sibling group.

Meeting our birth children

During Stage 2 our ASW met our children once informally, relatively early on in Stage 2 and then individually towards the end of our assessment. This gave them all the chance to share their understanding of the process and how prepared and happy (or not as the case may be) they were feeling about the prospect of adoption. Again, our ASW was very understanding as the boys both wanted me to be in the room with them and she was absolutely fine with that. We also wrote a bit about each child to include in our report so that the Panel had a good sense of the whole family.

Once the PAR was finished our ASW gave it to us to read through. Feedback from us was welcomed – either on factual mistakes/misunderstandings, or if we felt something misrepresented what we had been trying to say. In March our PAR was completed and signed by all concerned and sent off to the members of our Panel.

Support Network Meeting

Shortly after our PAR was sent off we had our Support Network meeting (the format of this can vary between families). The meeting was a chance for our ASW to meet our support network informally over some lunch, but also to fill them in a little on where we were in the process and how things would proceed from here. It was also an opportunity to give them some initial pointers on how best to look after us and offer support in the early days of a placement – something which I know many of them found really helpful. It was also during Stage 2 that I attended a training day specifically covering Fostering for Adoption.

Meanwhile of course, aside from all the formal meetings, training, reports and general ‘proceedings’ there was plenty of activity and emotion as we looked ahead to our Panel date. As well as going through a process, we were of course, looking forward to welcoming a new member into our family. We transformed our spare room into a nursery/young child’s bedroom. We decided on a theme (not something we had done with our four previous babies!) and bought a cot mobile while away on a family adventure at Christmas.

In February the blackout blind went up and the spare bed was moved out. The old cot came out of the loft and was painted (again not something we had managed before despite it still bearing the teeth marks of its first occupant whose mother kindly passed it on to us!)

The blanket I was knitting was coming on, and I embellished some old cushions we had lying around to fit with the theme of the nursery.

Experientially then, reaching the end of Stage 2 and approaching our Panel date felt very much like approaching the due date at the end of a pregnancy. We were getting the room ready, preparing the children, picturing and anticipating the changes coming up. Of course, we were! Afterall, if Panel went well and we were approved as Prospective Adopters then we could be matched with a child at any time from that point.

But it wasn’t just a matter of pragmatics – emotionally speaking, our new baby deserved all the bustling and anticipation and excitement and nerves of a family preparing for its arrival, and I look forward to telling her all about it and sharing the joy of our Panel Day with her.

Approaching panel

To approach such a date without a sense of expectation just doesn’t fit with what it is all about. But as we welcome these emotions in and encourage them to make themselves at home in our lives, we need to do so with a word of warning. The joy and excitement and happy nervousness may well have to cohabit with some very different emotional housemates. Why? Because unlike the due date at the end of a pregnancy – which at very least triggers a relatively short countdown to baby’s arrival – being approved as Prospective Adopters simply triggers the start of an unknown waiting period. So just when you thought you were getting there, there is a knock on the door and emotions like impatience, anxiety and feeling totally out of control are barging in and unpacking their bags and your already overcrowded emotional house has just got even more full.

Is it a tricky time to navigate – yes. But is it worth it? 100%. Afterall, there are not many things in my life that top hearing my little one seeing a photo of the six of us at the end of her Life Story Book (pictures of her Adoption Journey) and declaring jubilantly, aged 2 ½ “All my family”.

And that’s Stage 2!

Whether or not you are matched quickly, you have reached a significant point in your adoption journey. You have come to the end of the assessment process – you are approved prospective adopters – you did it!

Hear more about Panel day in our adoptive mum’s next blog!

*More on Fostering for Adoption to come!

A note from Adopt Coast to Coast

Notes from Adopt Coast to Coast: A huge thank you to our adopter for sharing their own experiences of adoption. Please note no two adoption stories are the same and experiences and timescales will vary for each family – if you’d like to find out more about adoption and discuss your own circumstances please get in touch now. 

*Adoption Preparation Training content may vary.

If you’d like to find out more about adoption and discuss your own circumstances, please get in touch now.

If you want to find out more why not come along to an information event or one-to-one appointment?

Alternatively you could make an enquiry and one of our friendly team will give you a call to discuss your own circumstances and answer any questions you might have.

Welcome to the third in our series of blogs by one adoptive mum who is sharing her own experiences of adoption with us.  In our last post we looked at how she and her husband approached telling their birth children about their adoption plans and the children meeting the social worker for the first time. Here, we hear about some of the checks and references that needs to be complete and look at the training all prospective adopters undertake.

With all the ‘initials’ completed it was time to submit our Registration of Interest (ROI) to state formally that we wanted to progress.

Sending this off felt so special that we took a photo of us posting the forms to go in our Adoption Scrapbook!

Once this was received and our interest was accepted, we could start Stage 1 – which as the name of this post suggests is all about paperwork and training and a bit more paperwork.

Let’s start with paperwork! Our initial social worker had given us some idea of the sort of information that would be required of us in Stage 1 so we had most of the information gathered and once the forms arrived, we were able to return them swiftly – and set that Stage 1 countdown clock ticking!

The paperwork

Stage 1 forms give the technical information about your life which then enables the Local Authority to do all the necessary background checks such as referees, DBS and medical checks to determine that you are who you say you are. You’ll be asked about your educational and employment history as well as for the details of where you have lived throughout your life.

Having both moved around quite a lot as children – including abroad – it took a few phone calls/emails to parents to track down some of the details from our childhoods and all the addresses we had lived at since birth!

After the initial flurry of gathering all the information to fill out your forms, much of Stage 1 then goes on behind the scenes as the Local Authority chases up all that information you gave them, gets in touch with your referees, etc.

Very much not behind the scenes however are the medical you’ll need to book with your GP (and attend!) and, much more excitingly, the training.

Training

For us this was a three-day in-person training course and I really enjoyed it. It was great to get together and to be able to chat things through with our children at the end of each day. It was quite full on though so I wouldn’t plan too much else that week!

The course was taken by two social workers, and we had an adoptive parent visit to share her experience with us as well. Those of us doing the training were all at slightly different parts of our journey as well as from a variety of walks of life and it was a good time sharing with each other and learning together.

A few things I remember clearly more than three years later…

Firstly, I remember feeling accepted and welcome rather than judged. Very early on during the first day we were asked to share what our fears were. I shared that I feared being judged or put in a box and over-evaluated for everything I said – it was great to feel so welcome to share that AND to be reassured that that wasn’t the case – not just in words, but in the whole atmosphere of the three days.

Secondly, I clearly remember learning about the adoption triangle and the need for empathy with our child’s birth family. I’m not sure it surprised me as such, but it wasn’t something I had thought about clearly before. Looking back, it barely scratched the surface on the matter – but it got the subject open as intended. Particularly effective was doing a little exercise where we each assumed roles as we followed a birth family through the process of adoption*. Just moving around a circle of people with my children in tow (I was the birth mother) from ‘location’ to ‘location’ and then having one child removed and then two taken elsewhere enabled us all to enter, at just the most superficial level, a hint of the experiences that our little ones and their birth families are typically going through. As did our first look at some children’s Child Permanence Reports.

And finally, during this Stage 1 training I remember getting a first taste of Therapeutic Parenting and some of the different parenting techniques involved in looking after children from a background of trauma.

Although as I said earlier it was a full three days, it was all recognisably a first taste and one that is built on as you go forward, so please don’t worry if it sounds a bit daunting.

The workbook

And then Stage 1 ends as it starts – with a bit more paperwork – this time seeking to explore and answer some very different questions from all the forms you filled in at the beginning of Stage 1. For us this came in the form of our Adoption Workbooks. Your Workbooks are much more reflective and give you the chance to comment and reflect on your life experiences so far, both in general and in relation to adoption. Relationships – both past and present are looked into in detail – including describing the support network that will be available to you through the process of adoption and beyond.

Motivations to adopt and understanding of adoption is also a strong theme. There are some technical sections within this – notably finances – but largely it is less about facts and figures and more about who you are and what has influenced you, your identity and experiences. Some of these answers will very much overlap with your partners (if you are adopting as a couple) while others are a lot more individual.

Stage 1 complete

For us Stage 1 progressed on schedule and was completed within the 8-week deadline – the only slight problem was our DBS checks taking a bit of time to come through.

At this point we were given the opportunity to take a break of up to 6 months before starting on Stage 2.  This is built in to give prospective adopters time to think, reflect and sort things out if they want to.  Once again after we officially submitted our intention to move into Stage 2, the council would be up against another deadline.

In our next blog our adoptive mum will be looking at starting Stage 2 and the Prospective Adopters Report!

A note from Adopt Coast to Coast

Notes from Adopt Coast to Coast: A huge thank you to our adopter for sharing their own experiences of adoption. Please note no two adoption stories are the same and experiences and timescales will vary for each family – if you’d like to find out more about adoption and discuss your own circumstances please get in touch now. 

*Adoption Preparation Training content may vary.

If you want to find out more why not come along to an information event or one-to-one appointment?

Alternatively you could make an enquiry and one of our friendly team will give you a call to discuss your own circumstances and answer any questions you might have.

In this second instalment of our new blog, our adoptive mum shares with us her experiences of

Read the first instalment of her blog here. 

After the Initial Visit (IV) from a social worker at our home, it was time to introduce the idea of adoption to our two younger children – we hadn’t done this sooner as we wanted to gauge the council’s initial response to us first.

So, I hastily put together a little booklet for them to read through and fill in to give them the chance to respond individually.  The really important thing for us at this point was to allow them each to respond honestly without the pressure of trying to fit in with the responses and desires of the other members of the family.

Our daughter (the eldest and 13 at the time) had been in on it from the start – opening the whole idea by suggesting that we foster – so she was, as expected, delighted that we were getting the ball rolling and we felt it was vital the boys had a chance to have their own initial responses before we talked about it all together.

My husband sat with our middle child (11) and I sat with our youngest (9) in different rooms to give them each the space and attention the suggestion required! When my husband and I chatted with each other later we found that their reactions had been a perfect case study of their different characters.  Our middle child likes to take time to reflect and thinks things through, so he didn’t say much during that initial conversation, but our youngest child swung from total elation to fear and back again in the course of 5 minutes – ending by announcing that we should go and get a baby tomorrow!

We let the idea sink in and float around for a few days; waiting for them to initiate any further conversation. When our quieter, more cautious middle child came out with – “so when do we get to meet the social worker?” – we felt we had the whole family go-ahead and we needed to ask if she could come and meet the children.

Well, as you can imagine that was a meeting with quite a mixture of excitement and nerves – let me try and paint a picture for you.

Our (then) youngest child loves meeting new people and went into his normal overdrive mode heightened on this occasion by the emotions riding on the situation. I was on my way home with the older two when the social worker arrived and so I came into the situation with the youngest in full on hosting mode – introducing her to all his cuddly toys.

My eldest likes meeting new people but can feel overshadowed by her exuberant little brother and frustrated not to be able to get a word in edgeways. My middle one is not at ease in those kinds of situations.  So I am picking up on all these tensions and trying to look after and manage it while keeping my own nerves in check.

Of course, the social worker was not fazed by any of this – or if she was, she didn’t let on. She spoke really appropriately and clearly about the sort of situations that lead to children needing an adoptive family and also explored with the children the impacts that a new baby might make on their lives as well as introducing them to the various stages of the process that lay ahead of us. All these were topics that we then carried on with them throughout the coming months.

We tried to get the balance between having it as an open topic of conversation that they could feel free to raise at any time with any question or feeling, but also just getting on with normal life and not letting it dominate everything. So, we might all be in the car going on holiday and then throw in a question like: “What would be different on this trip if we had a baby?” making it very clear that negatives/challenges were welcome as well as positives.

We listened to the BBC podcast on adoption together and that was a good conversation starter and I tried to share some of what I was reading with them – particularly those books written to read with adopted children as they put some of the more complex ideas very simply. We got them involved with the training we went on by chatting at the end of the day about what we had learnt, but also by each of them entrusting a precious item to us to take in for the exercise that involved us all putting special things in a bag and having to give them to a virtual stranger to look after.

Quite regularly as the process went on, I had to give them an idea of where we were in the process and talk through the timings – both those we knew with relative accuracy and those that were less predictable/set.

After our Initial Visit from the social worker there was a bit of a break. This gave us time over the summer to get started on some of the recommended reading, to do some more knitting and to chat things through with trusted family and friends.

Once back from holidays we got in touch to inquire about progressing to Stage 1 and submitting our Registration of Interest form (ROI). Once those forms hit the ‘mat’ at their offices and we are considered suitable to proceed, a clock starts ticking and they are on a deadline. Stage 1 needs to be completed within 8 weeks/2 months of forms being received.

Now we were really on the way!

In our next blog our adoptive mum will be looking at starting Stage 1 training, references and checks.

A note from Adopt Coast to Coast

A huge thank you to our adopter for sharing their own experiences of adoption. Please note no two adoption stories are the same and experiences and timescales will vary for each family.

If you want to find out more why not come along to an information event or one-to-one appointment?

Alternatively you could make an enquiry and one of our friendly team will give you a call to discuss your own circumstances and answer any questions you might have.

At Adopt Coast to Coast, we are passionate about sharing the real-life stories of adopters, which is why we are delighted to introduce you to one adoptive mum’s story in this blog. In each blog, we’ll share the thoughts, feelings and the ups and downs of the adoption process from the perspective of one mum who has been through the process.

In this very first blog – we introduce you to our adoptive mum and her family and explore what made them first consider adoption…

About me

Hello! I’m sorry I can’t introduce myself personally, but I’m so glad you’ve joined me. I started this blog after I became an approved adoptive mum and was waiting for a match with my husband and our three birth children. We are now a family of 6 and have recently enjoyed our third Christmas with our little one following an autumn of 2-year anniversaries…

 2 years ago today we heard your name for the first time

2 years ago today I cuddled you for the first time…

What a delight to be able to share some of these precious moments with you as I embark on sharing our journey with you.

A word of warning – this is just our own little window into what the process has been like for us and I’m just me. I’m not an adoption expert, I’m an adoption ‘learner’. Also, my experience of the process will vary in lots of ways from the experience of others. What you read here is not to timescales, nor is it exhaustive or authoritative, but please do explore the Adopt Coast to Coast website for more information and to get in contact with the experts!

In place of an expert, I do hope you will find a friend, a fellow traveller along the twists and turns of the adoption journey. After all, sometimes simply having a taste of something can be more helpful than all the detailed, accurate, nutritional information in the world.

Where did it all start?

People can be surprised to hear that with three birth children of our own, we decided to add to our family through adoption, and they are often curious to find out what made us consider adoption in the first place.

As an aside – the more you get to know adopters the more you will see we are a wonderfully wide and varied bunch!

It all started on a family holiday, when our daughter shared that she had been thinking that maybe we could foster. This coincided with my husband and I reading a book about hospitality and an amazing improvement in the depression I suffer from. And so, we opened the door into a place called adoption and found we wanted to walk further in for a better look around.

A couple of days later, spotting a little one toddle past me as I sat in a coffee shop, I did a quick Google search for Fostering for Adoption. An acquaintance of mine had been through this process a few years previously and I had filed it away as ‘something of interest!’

I rang my husband to check we were on the same page and ready to take the next step by making an enquiry – as we were, I did just that.

In response to registering our interest we received an initial phone call from someone on the council’s adoption team to go through some very basic questions and an Initial Visit (IV) was arranged. We had our first experience of a social worker visit when they came to see my husband and I at home in June.

Our adoption journey was officially underway!

 In the next blog our adopter will look at introducing the idea of adoption to their biological children.

A note from Adopt Coast to Coast

A huge thank you to our adopter for sharing their own experiences of adoption. Please note no two adoption stories are the same and experiences and timescales will vary for each family.

If you want to find out more why not come along to an information event or one-to-one appointment?

Alternatively you could make an enquiry and one of our friendly team will give you a call to discuss your own circumstances and answer any questions you might have.