The final interview (really final this time)

Miranda came just before 4 and she was here for 3 hours. She had some “leftover” questions for the prospective adopters’ report and also some questions that the panel advisor at our local authority had asked. Some of these were once again about Glen’s father and about how we would address any bullying that our child(ren) may experience because of having gay parents. After answering all the questions she did a little exercise of asking us to write on separate pieces of paper how we imagined a moment on any given day after having adopted. How many children, ages, sex, type of activity we’d be doing... Our answers were quite similar, so I guess that’s good. Then she gave us a copy of the report each and we sat there reading it under her watchful eye. This was a bit unnerving as it felt like a timed reading comprehension exercise! We only had small comments to make regarding spellings and dates, and some phrasing. The second opinion interview has had to be moved to next Monday because it turns out that the social worker who will be doing it is not available on Wednesday after all. Miranda will send the full report once she has input the answers to all the questions we answered today and we will get a chance to read it all again and add our comments. She is hoping to do this by Friday at the latest. Then all that will be left will be to read the second opinion report, which the second social worker will send the day after she visits us.

We were completely exhausted by the time she left. But Miranda has written what we both feel is an accurate and positive report and we were happy with it. And she’s postponed the date for an operation because she didn’t want to be responsible for us having to delay panel date again! This surprised us and it’s incredibly nice of her. While she’s still not the warmest of people, I do think that she has got to know us quite well in the last few months and is clearly on our side, so hopefully she will convey that to the panel and get us approved.