Panel information and advice

Today we received a letter from our LA with the information about the panel members. We also had a phonecall from Miranda, who is back at work. Apparently she’ll be using a crutch for a few days (because of her knee operation) so I told her she should bring it on Friday to see if the panel take pity on her and approve us just because she’s currently “disabled”. I was joking, for the record. I mentioned that we were a little concerned when we read that the panel chair works for a Catholic adoption agency, as we fear that she may not be too keen on adoption by gay men, but Miranda says that she’s worked with her before and she thinks it won’t be an issue. She had some advice to help us for Friday and gave us a couple of questions that she thinks we may get asked and suggested we read some of the information we sent her so that it’s fresh in our minds, especially the statement Glen sent her regarding his relationship with his father. She also suggested that on Friday I let Glen answer questions first, otherwise he won’t get a word in edgeways! The cheek! ; ) She’s right of course.

Glen is feeling much better today after his visit to the dentist yesterday, so at least there’s no danger that he won’t be able to speak on Friday. It’s our anniversary today. We’ve been together for 13 years. We’re not really in the mood to celebrate anything until we know the outcome of Friday’s panel and last year we decided to celebrate our wedding anniversary (which is in May) instead, so we’re not doing anything special.

Memory lane down the adoption race

At the weekend I was going through some of the adoption paperwork and I found a letter from PACT (Parents and Children Together), whom we first contacted when we thought it might be possible to go down the inter-country adoption route (before we found out how expensive it is and how many countries don’t allow adoption by gay men). The letter was dated June 2005. It brought me back to the time we approached our local council in 2003 and were advised to wait until the Children and Adoption Act came in, and even before that, to the time in 2001 when we decided we would probably want to adopt but a bit later on. It made me realise just how long we’ve been thinking about it and even doing something about the adoption. And now we’re 4 days away from finding out whether we’ll be approved.

I find that one way to explain this process to people who aren’t familiar with it is to compare it to a race. First you need to decide that running is for you and you want to do it. Then you have to get accepted to a training programme and you do your training, which would be the equivalent to doing the home study. Panel is the qualifier, where you find out whether you’ll be running the race at all. And from then on you’re running a race where you don’t know how long the distance is or whether you’ll even make it to the end, which would be actually adopting. Of course, anyone who has children (adopted or not) will tell you that the race really starts once the children arrive, not before, and that the real challenge starts then. I would have to agree, so that’ll be the marathon, in for the long run. But if you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the whole thing it’s easier to see each part of the process separately, so I’m sticking to my metaphor.

So anyway, I’ve written the entire preceding paragraph just so that it makes sense when I say that we feel we’ve done all the necessary training and we’re ready to run. The day approaches and I’m getting a bit nervous. Glen is fantastically calm, but that may be because he went to the dentist today and had to have his gums opened, so he’s practically sedated with all the painkillers he’s taking!

Help a good cause while you shop!

Do you shop with Amazon? The link below takes you to the UK site for Amazon as usual, but every purchase benefits New Family Social, the organisation we belong to that helps same-sex adopters. They get between 5%-10% of the item price of anything you purchase, including books, DVDs and music downloads.

http://www.amazon-nfs-shop.co.uk

So please add this link to your favourites and every time you buy something in Amazon, you'll be helping a good cause without any cost to you.

To read more about New Family Social you can go to

http://www.newfamilysocial.co.uk

Good news for our fellow prospective adopters

Yesterday we had dinner with our small local prospective adopters’ group (two mixed-sex couples: R&A, one of the couples we met at prep groups, and G&S, two friends who started their adoption process a few months before we did). Both couples had good news to share: G&S have identified two sets of children that they are interested in and their social worker agrees that they would be a good match, so she is going to get in touch with their respective social workers to arrange visits if possible. There is even better news for R&A, who were approved after their panel was undecided and were left hanging around for about three weeks before the decision maker finally said yes: they are going to matching panel next week! We are so excited for them. They will actually go to panel just before us, so we will probably see them on the day. All this talk of panel started to make us a bit nervous about it, though.

Today Glen is on an all-day first aid course with the scouts. It’s part of his beavers training. He’s been doing a few courses and continues to go every week. He’s really getting involved and enjoying it.

Today we’ve received the letter from our local authority confirming the time of our panel, giving us directions, and asking us to reply confirming that we would like to attend the panel. We were under the impression that we would get a list of the panel members and we haven’t, though. We may ask about that, as it would be good to know who we will be facing.

One week to go

We finally caught up with our friends whom Miranda chose to visit at the last minute. They were asked pretty much the same sort of questions as the rest of our referees (how long they’ve known us, what they thought when we told them we wanted to adopt, how we interact with their children, they feel about their children mixing with adopted children...). They said she was really nice and talked about us in a very positive way, so that was a relief.

I also had a very nice email from a friend who came over to visit us recently. We hadn’t seen them in a while and hadn’t got round to telling them about our adoption plans, so we told them when they came for lunch with their 2 year-old. She emailed to say how pleased they were for us and told me that, before we actually told them, her husband had asked her if she knew whether we had any plans to adopt. Apparently he thought we were very good with their son! I know it’s silly, but it’s nice that people think that we’d make good parents. If only they were part of the panel!

Speaking of panel, we still haven’t received the letter we were supposed to get confirming the date and giving us the actual time, directions etc. And there’s only one week to go! So I rang our local authority this morning and they’ve given us the time over the phone and told us that the letter should arrive early next week. Apparently your social worker normally phones you to let you know the time, but of course as Miranda is on sick leave at the moment nobody did. She was expecting to go back to work on Monday but they told me today it may be a little longer. As long as she’s there next Friday for our panel!

The wisdom of Mma Ramotswe / sexism in adoption.

While I was on holiday I caught up with a few books I’d been meaning to read for a while. One of them was The Miracle at Speedy Motors, the 9th volume in the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall-Smith. The main character, Mma Ramotswe, adopted two orphans, and in one chapter the boy she adopted is struggling with his identity and with the fact that he is adopted. After reassuring him, she realises that she has now come to the point where she considers herself his mother and thinks: “We could all be a mother, all of us; even a man could be a mother.”

I just liked the line when I read it and thought I’d share it. Even though the line itself is not about gay adoption, the implication of saying that a man could be a mother is that a man can do just as good a job as a woman in raising children. I have discussed before how many people’s prejudices about gay men adopting are not necessarily about the gay bit (although there are plenty who have a problem with that), but about men in general adopting. I have personally never encountered among my friends and acquaintances anyone who has expressed any reservations about us adopting because of being gay (at least to our faces), but on a couple of occasions people have expressed quite sexist opinions (“a child needs a mum”). I think this is one of those areas where same-sex adoption differs for gay men and lesbians: being raised without a father is acceptable (plenty of single mothers out there to prove the point), but being raised without a mother is perceived as unfair on the children, or at least putting them at a disadvantage.

Newsround... and reality check

The Home Office in Morocco has decided to threaten those publications in the press who defend homosexuality or portray it in a positive light after the magazine Al Michaal published a story about an unofficial gay wedding. Needless to say, homosexuality is criminalised in Morocco. Maybe the Daily Mail should be published there? It’s not like they’re ever going to be accused of portraying homosexuality in a positive light...

The good news is that Venezuela is to legalise gay unions as “asociaciones de convivencia” (cohabitation associations) in a law of gender equality to be passed soon, although there is no word on gay adoption, though.

I think sometimes when some of us have a moan in the New Family Social or Adoption UK forums about a slow adoption process, or encounter homophobia from social workers or authorities we forget just how privileged we are to live in enlightened places where gay adoption is allowed at all. No matter how much we know that we can make good parents and offer a child a loving home, there are many places in the world where that is not an option, and we should count our blessings (even though the system is not perfect).

Dinner with adopters and goodbye to one of "my" schoolchildren

Last Saturday S&J, the gay couple who live near us and we met at the New Family Social meeting in December (I mentioned them in a previous post), came over for dinner with their 6-year-old son. We had a great time and their son was very well behaved, curious, chatty, polite, and also a bit cheeky. They are a real inspiration to us and have clearly worked very hard to get to where they are with their son. They remind us that this thing we want to do is possible, which sometimes we need to be reminded about.

Today I went back to volunteering at the school after a few weeks away. The kids welcomed me as if I’d been missing for ages, and we had a great time making origami models. One of the boys is leaving the country soon and today was his last day at school, so it was a bit sad as well. It’s funny how attached I’ve got to the kids after 10 months or so. The group I see most is the top class, which means that they won’t be around for the next school year as they leave to go to “proper” school, and I will really miss them. I wish I could post a picture of them for everyone to see. Put together they look like a 90s Benetton advert, as each of them is a different colour, and they are the cutest bunch you could ever meet. If only I could get them to pronounce my name properly...

Back from holiday

We’re back from our holiday. We had a lovely time off and managed to relax and switch off for a whole two weeks, which doesn’t happen often! Well, we did talk about the adoption a few times, and even wondered if this may have been our last holiday on our own for many years to come.

We were supposed to receive the report from the second opinion interview before we left but it never arrived on time, so we had to find an internet cafe while we were away, which we eventually did 4 days into our holiday. The report was quite positive overall, although once again it mentioned Glen’s relationship with his dad. We just don’t know any more if this will turn out to be nothing at all or our stumbling block, but as there is nothing more we can do about it, we’ll just have to wait and see. If there are any questions about it at panel we will try to explain as best as we can.

I mentioned before we went away that Miranda had decided to do one more reference interview with a friend of ours. She realised that all the interviews she’d done were with people who do not live in the same place as we do, so she arranged this one with a friend who lives really close by. I had a text from our friend while we were away saying that the interview went well, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet.

We also had an email from Miranda to say that she is having the operation she’d delayed so she could complete our report, so she is actually on sick leave right now and won’t be back to work until 3 days before panel. Hopefully all will be well, she’ll recover in time, and there won’t be any further delays to our panel date!

Second opinion interview

Miranda and the second opinion social worker came over and did the second opinion interview. This other social worker was actually one of the two who did our initial interview back in January last year, but we hadn’t seen her since then. She was funny, warm, positive, caring and very clear. She asked us some questions starting with Glen’s relationship with his father, which we had to explain for the umpteenth time, and then asked about the number and gender of children we are hoping for. She talked about the uncertainties that surround many of the children in the care system. We also discussed prejudices, the process in general, and contact. They were the kinds of questions that she expects panel may ask us. Both she and Miranda seem quite positive about us being approved, but she said that if we do get approved then we should get ready for a long wait given that in social workers’ minds gay couples are near the bottom of the pecking order after heterosexual couples and single women.

The interview lasted just over an hour and a quarter and after they had gone we felt completely exhausted and unsure about how to feel about the end of the assessment process. It feels like it’s suddenly all very real and for the first time we’re allowing ourselves to believe that we may actually get approved. I think we’ve been refusing to get our hopes up expecting a hurdle that we wouldn’t be able to overcome. And now the assessment process is over and all that’s left is to see whether panel agree with the local authority assessment.

It’s a month until we go to panel and the work is done, so all we can do is wait. In the meantime we’re going on holiday for two weeks, so I don’t think there’ll be any updates in that time. We’re completely exhausted and really looking forward to going away. When we were planning it we kept thinking this may be our last major holiday before we adopt, but given the comment we heard today about getting ready to wait a long time, it may not be so. In any case we’re going to switch off from the whole process and enjoy our time off together.

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.