Adopters, paperwork and Daily Mail nightmares

We spent the weekend in full adoption mood. On Friday afternoon two of the couples we met in our preparation groups came over with their adopted children. It was the first time we had met one of them (an almost 2-year old boy) and he was real livewire, going everywhere and keeping everyone on their toes! He’s really sweet and fun. This week we also had news from G&S, our friends who started the process before we did and had a big setback with their match back in August. The kids they had been linked with have finally had the adoption order, so everything’s back on track and they should be going to matching panel early next month, just a few days before we do! On Saturday night we saw another gay couple we met through New Family Social and they’ve also had good news regarding their social worker and been given a matching panel date for the end of the month – so it’s good news all around. In fact they’ve been linked with a sibling group we enquired about (I referred to them as Boy F and Boy G at the time). You don’t normally find out what happened to the children you saw a profile for and never heard back from their social worker, so it’s really nice to know that those boys will be going to a good home.

We spent yesterday reading the psychological reports for Boy H and his birth parents and they really didn’t make for happy reading. Even though we know that the birth parents treated him badly, you can’t help but feel sorry for them as there is so little going for them. We also read the first draft of the placement and support plans, which we commented and fed back on today so they can be taken to the planning meeting on Thursday. And finally we wrote the first draft of the document we’ve been asked to provide with our views on the placement plan and explain why we would make good parents for Boy H. We listed what we think are our strengths and how we would support him. We hope that’s what they are looking for!

Thinking about the birth family obviously was in the back of my mind when I went to sleep. I actually had a nightmare and woke up at 4 this morning. In my nightmare the birth family had been told about us (we know that after panel the local authority are going to tell them about the fact that it’s a gay couple that will be adopting their son) and they sold their story to the Daily Mail, which ran a story about us on their front cover! How’s that for a truly terrifying thought. After everything that happened last year to the gay couple in Scotland I guess it’s a possibility that we’ll have to live with until we know that the birth family have been told and how they react. A remote possibility I hope!