Ah, the adoption process! I think there are a lot of myths surrounding the actual process to adopt a child. For one, non-adopters always seem to dwell on ‘the process’ as the most difficult part. I remember lots and lots of ‘I’ve heard it takes such a long time…’ ‘it’s ridiculous how long it takes…’
But, to be honest, they do need to be thorough. You can’t just walk in off the street and expect to be given a child. Yes, it’s very annoying that ‘normal’ parents can just have sex one night and end up with a child; no meetings, investigations, courses, referees, scrutiny, health checks etc… but … we’ve been here before.
IT CAN TAKE A VERY LONG TIME
The process took us three years from start to finish, but a lot of that was our fault, as we paused it early on, to finish renovating our house. Looking back on our early experience, the thing that should have taken much longer was the preparation; classes and sessions for how to deal with certain problems that always seem to be thrown up when children who have only known neglect, abuse and constant disruption, move into your home. I’m hoping that a lot of this is just our experience and that there are really good adoption agencies out there. Our experience was particularly awful.
Back to the myth that the process is long. Well, it is long, so not a myth, but I still think it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the hurdles you face as you go along. The main gripe about that is that the children are stuck in limbo whilst grown-ups have lots and lots of meetings and lots of cups of tea and cake.
FIRST SOCIAL WORKER VISIT
After the initial phone call, an adoption social worker came to visit. We were nervous… I bought expensive biscuits, which I was too nervous to offer, so I left them on the table and pretended at the end that I’d forgotten them.
I think the first thing that struck me was how confident she was coming into our home and looking around… Tom wasn’t too impressed when she asked us what our house would be worth when we’d finished the renovations but I jumped in and told her, trying to be as transparent as possible.
Some of the initial questions were: which ages were we thinking of and boys or girls. We said a boy and girl, or two girls (I wanted a daughter, at least let me have some control) ages 3 and under. Sadly, she said they had plenty of children of this description in their care.
WHAT IS THE ADOPTION PROCESS – BRIEFLY
She ran through the process. If we were approved to go ahead after an introductory course, there would be many sessions with an adoption social worker. Then, eventually, after our chosen referees had written their references, it would go to ‘Panel’ to be approved. This sounded particularly daunting; around 15 people seated around a table asking us questions – I’ll come to that later. If approved, they send you reports of children that could be a potential ‘match’. There is then a Matching Panel, where the 15 people decide if the children can live with you. After that, the real journey begins. Over time, you get used to the jargon, just like I did on the IF journey. It sucks you in and you can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a part of you.
We shook hands, smiled and she left. A few weeks later we received a letter inviting us to a two-day group session with other prospective adopters. It was starting to get a bit scary…
