Prospective Adopter’s Report (Formerly Form F)

Miranda popped round to drop off the final version of the report on Friday afternoon. For some reason we’ve avoided looking at it almost all weekend. We’ve been really busy and we wanted to be in the right frame of mind to read it. Finally we read it this evening. It’s a whopping 72 pages (46 for the main report and the rest are appendices and additional forms) so it took us around 90 minutes each to read it. There are a couple of spelling and minor errors with names and ages and stuff like that, but it’s all there. I am actually quite amazed at how well Miranda has got to know us in the last few months over the course of one individual interview each and seven joint interviews. Her comments are quite accurate and her reflections very encouraging.

On Friday she also lent us a children’s book on dealing with racism to read. Apparently it will help us deal with homophobic bullying. She has also lent us the BAAF guide to “recruiting, assessing and supporting lesbian and gay carers and adopters”. I’ve only read a quarter of it so far, but it looks like it will be a very useful book to read. If nothing else, at least to get an idea of what training panel members and social workers may have had to deal with same-sex couples.

Also on Friday we finally decided to go ahead with a loft conversion we’ve been planning for a while. Our house isn’t terribly big, so it will give us more options regarding being matched with more than one child. And if we don’t get approved or matched we’ll have lots of spare room in the house!

Tomorrow (well, later today, actually given the time of writing) we have our second opinion interview. Miranda said it should only take one to one and a half hours. And after that if all goes well we should be ready for panel in April. Fingers crossed.