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.

Final interview dates

I’ve been back in the UK for a week, but we took a few days off straight after I got back from Spain and I’ve not been on my PC for five whole days. It was nice to be off together, even if it was in the UK and in cold weather. There were kids off on half-term everywhere, and all of the places we visited had activities for kids, which made us realise that we could have done pretty much the same stuff we’ve done if we had kids with us.

Speaking of doing things with kids, Glen went to the local fire station with the Beavers last week. Yes, I asked and no, there were no cute firemen in uniform.

Miranda rang once more to ask Glen some questions about his family tree and we’ve now got dates for our final interview with her to go through her report: Monday afternoon! She was hoping to post it so we could read it beforehand, but if not we will have to read it and comment on the spot, which I’m not so keen on as I’d prefer to have time to digest the report. It may arrive tomorrow or Monday Morning, but based on past performance we’re thinking it won’t. Then on Wednesday we will have our second opinion interview with another social worker from the local authority. And then... that’ll be it! Panel next. It’s very exciting.

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.