Not booking trips

I've been considering a work trip for October and wasn’t sure whether to go ahead with the planning or not. I didn’t want to arrange the whole thing, book tickets and hotels and whatever else and then have to say to work “sorry I have spent all this money on this trip and I can’t go because I’m going on adoption leave”, but I also don’t want to let our lives (in and outside work) grind to a halt on the possibility that we may be matched. So I rang Miranda to ask if she thought it would be OK to book it. At the end of the day, both Miranda and the social worker who did our second opinion interview have told us repeatedly how because of being a gay couple we should be prepared for a longer wait once we were approved. Miranda’s response when I asked what she thought about booking the trip was “I wouldn’t do it”. She said that as long as we’re still considering two children then we may have a shorter wait, October is six months away, and she thought that left quite a gap in between for things to happen. I rang Glen and told him and we didn’t know how to take her reply. Is she planning something and not telling us? We found the possibility both exciting and scary! Of course if come October we’re still waiting I’ll be most unimpressed that I won’t going on this work trip.

On Friday we filled in the evaluation form we were given asking for feedback on the panel experience. We mentioned how nice most people had been and made a couple of suggestions of how we thought the experience of going to panel might be improved. We both reflected on how different our responses would have been if hadn’t been approved...

Glen spent Saturday on a Beavers training course. He’s going to become a Beaver leader! The current leader is leaving, and he’s been asked to take on the leadership.

After-panel thoughts

The letter from our local authority confirming the approval arrived by recorded post last Wednesday, exactly a year on from the first day of our preparation groups. It was really nice to see it in black and white. Although it’s felt like forever and quite a drawn out process, a year from prep groups to being approved doesn’t seem that long when you think about it. And we didn’t have to wait ages to get on the prep groups either, like other people have had to, it was only three months or so. When you compare us to the two straight couples we met at prep groups it’s not so different either. Both couples were approved last November, so it does feel like our process has taken a few months longer than theirs. But we did take a month or so to think about it after prep groups, though. And there was that break during the summer when I was working away. If we had gone to panel last February as planned it would have been more or less the same amount of time. And at the end of the day, what matters is that we are approved now.

Speaking of the couples we met at prep groups, as you may recall one of the couples, R&A, have been matched. They start their introductions in two days’ time. It’s so exciting. The other couple, S&R, came for dinner last Thursday. In contrast to R&A nothing at all has happened for them in the last five months. They’ve not even been sent one profile and they were approved at the same time as R&A by the same local authority. I guess it proves that no two couples are the same. They are getting quite frustrated about it, but there isn’t a lot they can do. We expect our wait to be quite long as well. At least we’ll know that it’s not because of being a gay couple, since other couples are also kept waiting for quite a while!

One really good thing at the moment is that we’re both feeling really positive. If you’ve been reading our story from the beginning you may recall that I used to worry that Glen was not as keen on adopting as I was. You should have seen his reaction when the letter confirming our approval arrived. He was so happy and excited. We were both expecting that after being approved we’d have an “oh my god what have we done?” panicky moment, but it hasn’t really happened. Which is not to say it won’t happen at some point... Of course we are sure that we want to do this and really looking forward to what lies ahead, but this is a life-changing process and it would be wrong not to wonder whether you really are prepared for something so major and so full of uncertainties. Like I say, so far we’re really positive, though. We’re going to be kept busy by work and the loft conversion while we wait anyway. And we should really think of making a list of everything we want to do before we’re matched with a child (or children), as we sure won’t have time to do anything after that!

Approved

Miranda rang today to let us know that the decision maker has confirmed the panel’s decision and we are now approved for 1 or 2 children, ages ranging from 0 to 7th birthday. The letter should arrive soon, although with Easter around the corner it may not be until next week. I can’t wait to see it in black and white.

In the meantime, the biggest consequence of this is that we can make decisions again! We know that being approved doesn’t mean that we will be matched or that we will definitely adopt, but we are being positive and assuming that it will happen, if only for practicality’s sake. This means that we no longer have to have hypothetical discussions that start with “if we are approved...” On Friday afternoon we rang the builder to confirm we’ll be going ahead with our planned loft extension to make some room in the house. And I may actually say goodbye to my rusty 12-year old tiny car and buy something with rear doors (really, a must for strapping children in and out of car seats / booster seats)! We’ve been saving for a while for this and the bank has agreed to extend our mortgage, so hopefully we’ll be able to afford it...

We spent Sunday clearing the loft in preparation for the loft conversion. This involved me trying to convince Glen that he needed to get rid of some of the stuff he’s been hoarding for ages. He says a lot of it could be in a museum one day (anyone heard of a “Museum of 60s/70s childhood”? They could come and take it all!). I just refer to it as “tat”. I failed miserably for the most part, but we did fill three huge bags with old clothes and a few things went to the dump and on Freecycle.

We’ve had lots of phone calls, emails, and texts from family and friends. The common theme (apart from the obvious congratulations) is the same piece of advice: go out, go to the cinema, go to the theatre, go to concerts, go on a big trip (well we just came back from one) and do everything you ever meant to do, because once you have children you’ll never go out again.

Panel day

Last night Glen was uncharacteristically nervous. He’s normally the quiet one and I am the one who gets fidgety but I was really calm. I think it was to compensate for Glen’s nerves. We sat down and read some of the stuff we’d written during the home study and then prepared the questions that Miranda had suggested we might be asked. The big question was how we might explain Glen’s relationship with his dad to a child in our care. We came up with good points to make but Glen was really uncomfortable and nervous and then he told me that he was sure that we were going to be turned down and it would be his fault. He really felt that the issue with his father was going to be the one we could not overcome and felt responsible as it was on his side of the family, so to speak. I reminded him that we could explain that he (Glen) is not responsible for his father’s actions and it was not his fault. We watched some TV and went to bed late to make sure we’d be tired and not spend half the night tossing and turning trying to go to sleep.

When we woke up we opened the curtains to find a grey foggy day. We turned on the news and heard that Madonna’s adoption attempt had failed. Was it an omen? Was today a day for failed adoption dreams? We drove 40 minutes down to the place where the local authority panel meets. On the way I read out the text messages and messages from friends and the comments left on this blog. It was really sweet to feel the support from everyone, even people we’ve never met, so thank you to those who wished us good luck, it meant a lot this morning.

We arrived at the hall where panel meets just after 11. R and A, the couple we met in preparation groups who had their matching panel today were there, waiting to hear the outcome of their panel. We said a quick hello and then we were ushered to the far side of the room to give them some privacy. We saw the panel chair approach them and could see their smiles. They came over to us as soon as the chair left and told us they’ve been matched with a 9-month little girl. They were glowing with happiness. It was really sweet to hear such good news and to see such a positive outcome for them.

Miranda arrived then and looked nervous. She said that she’d been over the paperwork again last night and was feeling confident (even though she didn’t look it). The panel chair approached us, introduced herself and explained they would first start the meeting with Miranda and then she (the chair) would come to get us. They went up to the panel room at 11.15 and we sat waiting by the drinks machine. We had another look at the notes we’d prepared last night to answer the questions and tried not to get too nervous. Glen spilled his coffee three times, although thankfully he managed to avoid spilling it all over himself.

The chair came down at 12.10 to fetch us. We made our way up the stairs and entered the room. For some reason in my head I had pictured it as some sort of courtroom, but it was just a large table with lots of people sat around it. The panel members all had a sign before them with their names and their roles. They each introduced themselves in turn. There were about 10 members (chair, medical advisor, social workers, adopters acting as independent members, a guy from CAMHS, an administrator, and an observer as well as the panel advisor from our local authority and Miranda). It felt like a huge number of people, but most of them were smiling and it didn’t feel too threatening. The chair listed what they thought our strengths were and then asked us about how we’d found the assessment process and to identify the one thing that had stood out in the learning process. We spoke of how we’d found the process less intrusive than we’d expected and how contact with birth families was probably the issue that we’d have never considered before preparation groups and now understood why it needs to happen if possible. After that she asked Glen about his working pattern, and whether he’d have to spend many nights away from home. Glen replied that he hardly ever has to be away because of his job any more as it’s changed recently and many things can be done online. The next question was about our marital status. They were a bit confused by the fact that we were married in Spain and how that “translated” under UK law. Glen replied that “the marriage means nothing”, and I had to step in to explain that what he meant was that it wasn’t recognised as a marriage under UK law but it was recognised as a civil partnership. Everyone laughed at Glen’s wording. Then we were asked if we had a preference for boys or girls. We explained that most of the parents in our support network have boys and of course we feel somewhat better prepared for boys having been boys ourselves. We added that it has been pointed out to us that gay men tend to be matched with boys. The next question was about female role models. We mentioned the names of females in our support network and also made the point that our support network will include the parents of the children that any child matched with us meets at school or other activities. Finally we were asked about other gay parents we had met and whether they had encountered any bad reactions. We talked about NFS members and in particular about S&J, whom I’ve mentioned here before, and how they hadn’t experienced any problems with other kids, their parents, or the teachers at their boy’s school. While we spoke most members were nodding and smiling and we weren’t made to feel uncomfortable at all, although one of the members looked quite stern.

After about 15 minutes of questions we were asked to wait downstairs while they discussed their decision. As soon as we got downstairs we both commented on the fact that we’d not been asked about Glen’s father at all. After all the preparation we’d made for that particular question and how much it had been stressed to us that that could be the biggest hurdle for panel! We decided that either they were so clear that they weren’t going to approve us that it wasn’t worth bothering to go down that line of questioning or Miranda really had done her job at explaining the situation.

Ten minutes after we’d left the room Miranda and the chair came down. Miranda was quite poker-faced, so I did fear the worst for a moment, but the chair said “you can smile now” and then she said how pleased she was to say that we’d been unanimously approved. We were both so relieved! She told us that because of Easter it may be a while before we get the letter of approval from the decision maker (who has to write to us within five working days) but she said that the outcome was unlikely to be any different from the panel’s recommendation given that their decision had been unanimous.

Once the chair had left, Miranda told us what they’d asked about during the time she’d been defending our case. She said that among our strong points were our support network, stable relationship, very good references, and our voluntary work. She also said that they thought that Glen’s relationship with his father and brother was something that an adopted child could relate to, as is the fact that I have mild dyslexic tendencies, and my experiences of bullying at school.

We got in the car and texted everyone. The first reply came from Glen’s mum and that made us get quite emotional. All the way home we got lots of lovely texts from friends and family. I was reading them to Glen, who was driving, and my voice kept shaking as I read them out. We stopped to get something to eat and I did a quick blog update on my mobile (the wonder of mobile technologies!).

By the time we got home it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing, so it’s taken me a few hours to write this with the constant breaks to answer it. We’ve booked a table at our favourite restaurant and we’ll be having a quiet celebration just the two of us. Tomorrow we’re seeing some of our friends and we’ll have a bigger celebration. We are absolutely delighted and physically and emotionally drained. This has been a day we’ll never forget.

Panel tomorrow

Well panel’s tomorrow and we’ve managed to survive the week without getting too nervous. So far, so good. Tomorrow will be another story, of course. What’s weird is thinking that tomorrow is likely to be one of the most significant days of our lives whatever the outcome.

So what if it’s a “no”? We don’t really want to think about it too much as we want to be positive, but we need to consider that we may be rejected at panel. The obvious thing to do would be to contest the decision through the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM). Failing that we could go to another agency I suppose (if an agency will take you once you’ve been turned down by a panel). It would depend on what reasons we are giving to justify the decision. Like I say, we don’t want to think about it too much.

This evening we are going to go through our Prospective Adopters’ Report again and prepare a couple of questions that Miranda suggested we may get asked. And then we’re going to put it all away and watch a film or something to try to switch off and not get too worked up.

I’ll report tomorrow when we’re back. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

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!

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!

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.

Non-panel date

In my last post I completely forgot to write about last Friday. We have known since mid-January that it wasn’t going to be the case any more, but last Friday (February 6th) was the original panel date we had been given. We were both a bit disappointed on the Thursday evening as the following day was a date that we had been looking forward to and it was marked on our calendar. Also, a couple of friends that we’d forgotten to tell that the panel wasn’t to happen got in touch to wish us good luck, so we had to tell them that it was delayed and so on. But then on Friday when we got up we saw all the snow that had fallen overnight and realised that we couldn’t even drive out of our street let alone the 30 or so miles to where the panel meets. I’m fairly sure that the panel didn’t meet as most people could not get to work in our area. So it really worked out well that we had three weeks to get used to the idea that panel was not happening on that day as opposed to looking forward to it, doing all the last-minute preparation and coping with the nerves only to find on the actual day that we could not make it due to the weather!

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.