Daily Mail articles on gay adoption

Nothing like writing that there wasn’t much to report yesterday for all hell to break loose regarding gay adoption. Yesterday, the Daily Mail (for anyone outside the UK it’s a very conservative paper that disguises itself as “family oriented”) published a story (in inimitable style) about how the parents of a heroin addict have not been allowed to adopt their grandchildren and instead they’ve been matched with a gay couple:

Link to the Daily Mail story

Needless to say, the reporting is completely one-sided and of course misses out on why the grandparents haven’t been allowed to adopt, for which I am sure there are very good reasons.

Today it was followed up by this piece:

Link to the Daily Mail follow-up story

In both cases, the worst thing are the comments left by Daily Mail readers, many of whom start their comments with “I’m not a homophobe BUT...” and proceed to leave completely homophobic comments.

The Pink Paper also reported the story today, alas with an altogether different slant:

Link to the Pink Paper report on the same story

And Stonewall have issued a response expressing their deep concern about how the Daily Mail has reported the issue.

Link to Stonewall response

I actually had tears in my eyes when I read the Daily Mail piece. Just when you think that you live in a world that may accept you, it’s heartbreaking to find such homophobia and bigotry.

Nothing to report

I know it’s been over a week since my last post, but NOTHING’s happened since I last wrote. We had hoped that Miranda would have got back to us by now with dates when we can expect the home study report and for the second opinion interview (after all, it was all supposed to happen last week), but we’ve heard nothing from her. We don’t want to push her so we are waiting as patiently as we can.

In the meantime we are continuing with our volunteering. I was at the school on Monday. The topic of the week has moved on from “hearing” to “taste”, so we spent the afternoon talking about favourite foods, drawing them, and spelling them. We also played outside with huge wood building blocks, which was a lot of fun for the kids (OK, maybe me too). Glen’s still going to Beavers. This week they are doing electricity, so he’s bought some circuits, batteries and lightbulbs to make a demonstration. I wish I could be there to see it.

We’re also continuing with our reading. Glen’s reading “The Primal Wound” and I am reading “Building the Bonds of Attachment: awakening love in deeply troubled children”. I am planning to start a book review section for this blog so I won’t go on about them now, but suffice to say that they don’t make easy reading...

Hope to have some news to report soon!

A lovely visit

Today was the day we were supposed to finalise our home study. We had an email from Miranda apologising again for the delay, and thanking us for some information updates we sent her, but still no date for our rescheduled interviews.

I went to the school today for the first time since late December (the past couple of weeks I could not take the time off) and had a great time playing with the kids. I was with the 5 year olds today and they were learning about hearing (the theme for this term is the five senses), so we played games that included recognising different sounds.

At the weekend we met up with S&J, two guys we met at the New Family Social who adopted a boy last year and live near us. They invited us round for coffee and we chatted about the adoption process and everything they went through. Their son is a very sociable chatty boy who was very happy to talk to us, show us his toys and even the book that S&J had made for him just before they were introduced. We went to their local pub for lunch and chatted some more. They must have answered a thousand questions for us. They've not had any issues at school (with the other kids or their parents) with their son having two dads, which is something that has always worried us. Their son has really settled with them now and it's a pleasure to see them together as they make a great family. After such a disappointing start to the weekend last Friday, it was great to spend the afternoon with them.

Delayed panel date

Yesterday was the deadline for Miranda to get our home study report to us and to the other social worker who will be doing the second opinion interview. She rang me at work at lunchtime to tell me that she hadn’t finished it partly because of a problem with her PC and the report template. She’s also been really busy with an assignment for a course she is taking. This means that they won’t be coming on Monday to finalise the home study and we won’t be going to panel in February. She apologised three times and once again offered to go to panel without us in March, but we really think that we should be there, so that means that we’re now looking at April.

In a way it is good that the report won’t be rushed. In fact Miranda said that another reason she thought it best to take time with the report was the fact that she still thinks there is an issue with Glen’s father (again!) and she wants to make sure she is happy with how that is explained in the report.

Glen is not surprised as he never thought that everything would get done on time, but I had actually got my hopes up. It was nice to think that we could get the approval process out of the way and start the family finding, especially knowing that it will take months - if not years – to be matched (if at all). So while we realise that in the big scheme of things in this process this is not a huge setback, we are really disappointed.

Happy news

We had some very good news yesterday. M&J, two guys we met at the June New Family Social meeting and who were approved last July, have been matched with a 17-month old boy. And it’s only taken 6 months from being approved to being matched, which I think is really fast! They are clearly very happy and we wish them the best of luck with introductions and the start of their new family. It’s really inspiring, encouraging, and uplifting to hear when other couples are successful with their hopes to adopt.

A date for the second opinion interview

Miranda rang earlier today. She and her colleague, who will be doing the second opinion interview, will come on the 19th. The plan is for Miranda to send us our home study report next Friday so we can read it over the weekend and feed back to her when they come to do the second opinion visit on Monday. Her colleague will then write her report on Monday evening or Tuesday morning so that it’s all ready. One possible delay could be that once the report is finished and before it goes to the panel members it has to be read by Miranda’s supervisor. If she has any requests for major changes or wants further evidence of anything then it probably won’t be done in time for us to go to panel in February. It all feels a bit rushed and we hope that doesn’t have a negative effect on the outcome, but after so many months it’s very exciting that the home study is finally coming to an end and we could be going to panel in a month’s time!

Panel delay?

Miranda emailed me on Monday evening to request that I send her again one of our documents, which she couldn’t find. I sent it to her yesterday with a little reminder that we were supposed to finalise the home study this week with the second opinion visit by another of the social workers from the local authority. We had told her that this could not be done next week as Glen will be away on a work trip. She rang me a bit later to tell me that she had planned to have our report ready next week and arrange the second opinion visit for then as well as she had forgotten that Glen was away. The deadline to submit the documentation so that it’s on time for February panel is next Friday so unless something changes it looks like we may miss it. Miranda knows we can’t make the next available date as we are not available during the day in March when the panel meets so she’s going to find out whether it is possible to delay things slightly so we can still get in. She mentioned that she could always go to panel without us in March. I said that we’d prefer to be there and go in April if we have to rather than not be there. It’s important to us to be able to make our case or answer any questions that may arise, and for panel to see us to avoid any preconceptions they may have about us. So either she rushes the paperwork, which isn’t great, or we have to wait a further two months, which we’d rather not.