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!

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!

Another referee interview and no report yet

One of the people we put down as a referee got a call from Miranda on Thursday evening to arrange an interview. We are quite surprised by this as all the other referee interviews were done in early December, so we don’t know whether Miranda just forgot to do this one, or whilst putting the report together she has decided that she needs more evidence of support. We can’t decide whether this is a good thing (she is being very thorough and covering all bases) or not-so-good (she thinks we may fail panel and is doing some last-minute salvaging).

We had hoped that we’d get to see the report before we have our final interview with Miranda, but nothing arrived in the post yesterday, so we’re guessing it won’t happen and we’ll have to read it in front of her.

Yesterday we spent the whole day with two good friends of ours and their two boys. We played with the kids and had a great time, and just before we left the kids spontaneously came over, said “thank you for coming to visit us and playing with us”, and gave us a kiss. They are so sweet.

Referee interviews

Miranda’s been interviewing our referees this week. On Monday she went to see one of my oldest friends in this country and today she visited both Glen’s mum and his oldest friend. They were all told that anything they said would be confidential and not to share with us the conversations they had with her, so of course the first thing they all did was to ring us. The interviews lasted about 1 hour each and they were asked about how they met us, how long ago (well, Glen’s mum didn’t get asked this), what they think about our plans to adopt, whether they support us, if they think that we are sufficiently prepared... the sort of things they were expecting to be asked. They all reported that they thought the interviews went well. Let’s hope Miranda has the same impression! Apparently she was very nice to all of them. She’s come to us for eight visits in total now (1 individual each and six joint ones) and I must say that she was really nice to us during the last two visits. She seems a lot more relaxed and even laughed at a couple of comments and looked through our wedding photo album. We think she was putting on this cold, detached stance and she’s now dropped it somewhat, which we want to read like she feels more positive that this is going to go ahead. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.