The visit

The first thing I thought about this morning when I woke up was that today our lives could change forever. It’s a weird feeling and a difficult one to manage when you’re trying not to get your hopes up. We spent the morning reading the profile again and going over our questions once more. I also decided to polish and hoover some more, but this was more out of trying to find something to do rather than because the house needed it.

We managed to get to lunchtime without getting too nervous and at 1.30 our social worker came. We chatted about nothing in particular and then Boy H’s family finder and social worker arrived. His social worker is quite young, which we think is a good thing. We provided drinks and biscuits and they started by giving us an update on Boy H and how he had moved on since the last report. They then announced that they’re no longer considering the other family they were going to visit (good!) but that he will feature in one of the family finding magazines next month (not so good). They allowed us to ask the questions we had prepared and also showed us some more recent pictures. They then asked us to clarify some questions they had from reading our PAR and explained what happens next (I’ll explain below). They had a quick look at the house, which they seemed to like. The social worker did ask if the house was always this tidy and I had to admit to a bit of over-cleaning! They left after that and promised to be in touch soon. Miranda stayed for a few minutes after they left and she felt the meeting had gone really well. She sounded very positive about it. She asked us whether we wanted some time to give her our answer, but we were both very happy for her to let them know that yes, we are still interested.

So what happens next? They will get in touch with Miranda on Thursday and ask her whether we’re still willing to go ahead (we are) and they will let her know whether they want to progress any further with us. Should they wish to continue with us, then they would arrange a second visit with Boy H’s foster carer. They really trust her opinion, so the decision is likely to be based on what she thinks of us. If that goes well then they would ask us to go and visit his school and attend a planning meeting to decide introductions arrangements and then they and Miranda would complete a matching report for us to go to panel possibly as early as March, with the idea being that Boy H would move in April!

This is very hard to get our heads around. On the one hand it’s very encouraging and if it does indeed go as planned then we’d be looking at a very quick process, which would be great. On the other hand, there are a lot of “ifs” involved and we mustn’t get carried away. So we’re left in a bit of a limbo, not knowing whether to be excited or not. In any case it’s been a positive experience and like I say, we are very pleased with the way the visit went. Roll on Thursday!