False Start

A couple of months ago, we had a false start. I didn’t write about it at the time, but I wanted to put down some of my feelings about this, as it was, and still is, a big deal for me. 

Part of what happened, was, I think, a result of a misalignment between our understanding/previous experience, and the reality here with TACT. So, by way of explanation, here is a snapshot of both...

Our understanding and previous experience: 

A social worker visits you for 4 months, getting to know you, meeting you in your home, asking tons of questions. He or she looks at your home, your bank accounts, and finds out everything about you: your family, your childhood, your hopes and dreams, your route into adoption, your likes, dislikes, and hobbies. The list goes on. By the end, the SW has written a comprehensive report on you, which is used to get you through Panel. After this, you discuss your “matching criteria” (yuck to that phrase) and make sure that the SW knows what you are looking for, what you would consider, and what you are ruling out. The SW then attends family finding meetings every fortnight, where a list of children waiting is discussed, along with a list of potential adopters. Matches between the two lists are considered and agreed upon by the professionals who know the children and the adopters inside out. When you’ve been matched with a child, the SW rings you, gives you the relevant info, asks you to consider it, answers your questions, paints a picture of the child and the situation, and things progress from there if you’re interested. This is what happened with Bounce.  

Reality here with TACT:

Up until Panel, similar to above. Meetings, chats, getting-to-know yous. As you know from my musings here, we don’t really feel like either of our two social workers ever properly got to know us, but that’s still the general aim (I think) in the months up to Panel. It’s after this that things change. So, here: The SW attends family finding meetings every fortnight, as expected, and any possible children that might fall somewhere within your matching criteria, or just outside it, are then emailed to you, as a PDF attachment, for your reading and perusal. These profiles are sent to all adopters who might have a slight proclivity to be interested. Upon then receiving your permission to pursue the match (or to let it drop if it’s not for you), the SW lets the child’s SW know about your desire to be considered, and then you are put ‘into a pot’ with everyone else who’s interested. At some point in the next few weeks, a meeting will happen to whittle down the prospective adopters, and then another meeting will be held to decide between the ‘top three.’ After this, the SW then phones you to tell you if you’ve been chosen or not.

Here are my problems with TACT’s approach:

1.    It is painful. 

a.    I do not want to be sent profiles as a PDF attachment to an email. I do not want the ping on my phone or laptop to herald another heartbreaking real life "case study" of a needy and vulnerable child who barely has anything remotely in common with my matching considerations. I do not want to have to deny a chance for a loving, stable family & home to a child that’s in need.

b.    Being told you may have been matched with a child is hard. Being sent details about a baby, who looks and reads and seems to be perfect for you, is hard, when you know there is slim chance that they’ll end up with you. The exhaustion of hope building, and then being ripped down, is relentless and reminiscent of monthly periods during our long struggle to conceive. 

c.  Waiting between the initial communication about the child, and the result of the matching meeting, is difficult, stressful, and tiring. You don’t know where you’re at. There’s no way of knowing if you’ll be chosen. You want and hope and pray that you will be chosen, and that the right thing, the absolute best and right thing, is chosen for the child. You hope. You wait. You hope. You try not to hope. You wait. You distract yourself. 

2.    This pain is avoidable and unnecessary

a.    The PAR is written for a reason. You go through 4 months of meetings with the SW for a reason: so that you are known. So that you are understood, representable. Our SW should be able to attend Family Finding meetings on our behalf, and express an interest on our behalf, and attend further meetings on our behalf, and learn the news that we have or haven’t been selected, on our behalf. There is no need for us to have any involvement in this, nor any awareness that it’s even going on. 

Pain, disappointment, and waiting are part and parcel of parenting, of conceiving, of adoption – of growing a family. I get that. BUT. This approach does little, if anything, to safeguard the wellbeing of potential adopters. It renders useless the time spent getting to know, getting to be known by, the social worker. Social Workers should be empowered and allowed to make a call based their own intuition and their in-depth knowledge of the prospective adopters, and if they’re wrong, or things aren’t as straightforward as that, there should be space for that and allowances made. They should shoulder the burden of the unknown so that the potential adopters don’t have to. I’m assuming, cynically perhaps, that there must be some financial reason for this approach because I can see no other reason why things need to be done this way. 

Just to set the record straight, by the way, our Social Worker, after this false start, agreed to only get in touch as and when we have been selected as the prospective adopters. All of the discussions and meetings will go on without our knowledge, and so we'll never (hopefully) be aware again of any times when we've missed out. We feel pleased and like our thoughts matter because of this change, but also a bit uneasy - does this mean that we're weak and difficult? Apparently this is the norm, everyone else can deal with it, but we need special treatment. I don't like that. Parents, especially adoptive ones, need to be resilient and strong. If we can't cope with this process, how can we be expected to cope with the demands of parenting? Well. Sometimes I don't cope with the demands of parenting. I'm not sure anyone does, not all the time anyway. I just hope our requests for change won't be held against us; I'm assured not, but still. 

Also by way of setting the record straight, the concerns I've written about here need to be fed back to TACT. And we are completely committed to doing that, once we've had a baby placed and things are all settled down. I know it sounds cowardly, but we're not prepared to shake things up at this stage. Afterwards, we'll be able to talk reflectively rather than reflexively, which will be much more efficient and effective for everyone involved!

Our Experiences at Panel

Now that we’ve been through Approval Panel twice, I wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts about our experiences. This may prove harder than I imagine because it will require me thinking back to our first time at Panel, which seems ages ago, but we’ll see how we get on. And this is actually my second blog post on the topic of Approval Panel – if you want to get more an idea of what may be involved, have a read of my post Six Steps to Surviving & Thriving at Panel.

The idea of Approval Panel isn’t ever something that caused me great worry or stress. Which is saying something, because I do tend to easily get worried and stressed! (You know booking holidays? – worried and stressed. You know renewing car insurance? – worried and stressed. You know Opticians appointments? – worried and stressed.) But I think our first Social Worker, Sarah, made us feel confident ahead of panel, reassuring us that she wouldn’t take us to Panel unless she was sure we’d get approved.

First time round, Panel hearings were held in an office complex in town which has lots of meeting rooms that people can hire out, as well as a really nice café and some store front and workshop spaces for new local start-ups. It’s a decent building, fairly new-ish, and it felt comfortable and familiar. I suppose we probably went for a quick cuppa somewhere beforehand – possibly in the café on site – but I can’t actually remember. I can remember, as we waited to be called in, leafing through the information pack we’d been given, which contained a blurb about each Panel member, and trying to work out if we knew any of them. Nine years of living, studying, teaching, and going to church in the city meant this wasn’t as remote a possibility as you might expect, but I don’t think we found any familiar faces. 

So, in we went. We were nervous, certainly, but we knew what the outcome would be and so we were able to speak and respond with an adequate level of coherence. We got approved, so I guess we did okay. I think the paperwork was good and our PAR was very straightforward, which seemed to work in our favour. To my memory they asked us about why we wanted to adopt, and they also touched upon what impact our Christian faith might have on things, i.e. What would we do if, when older, an adopted child came to different conclusions than us about faith and God and morals. (A silly question, in my view: Obviously we would support and love them no matter what; how does their being adopted have any impact on this at all?)

After our time in the room with the Panel (quite large, as I remember it – around 16-18 people I think), we went and awaited our fate in a neighbouring room. We didn’t have to wait long for Sarah and the Panel Chair to come back out and inform us that the decision had been made in our favour. We were relieved and pleased. Obviously. Again I imagine we celebrated with food and drink somewhere, but oddly I can’t remember.

Things the second time round were very similar in terms of the process and the way the interview went. The venue wasn’t quite as nice – an old, strange, back-building in town that you access off a side door that feels like an illicit entrance into a dodgy mafia joint (a very mafia joint that bears remarkable similarities to a dishevelled library, granted). We waited for about forty-five minutes as the previous interviews had all run over. The waiting room was small and more cupboard than room, with a glass wall and a couple of chairs – not uncomfortable, surprisingly. 

Our Social Worker, Helen, had very sadly been taken ill and wasn’t able to attend Panel with us, but it didn’t matter too much. We were left in the very capable hands of a replacement who looked after us well. We actually got on with her far more naturally than we did with Helen, and I can remember us covering all manner of conversation topics while we waited. 

Eventually it was the interview itself, which went well, and the Panel members – fewer in number than last time, and squished, as I remember, into a similar sized room as the one we’d been waiting in - were responsive and interested in what we had to say. The Panel Chair came out to find us again, after their deliberations, and, rather than simply telling us their decision (a unanimous yes), he read out a long list of what had been deemed, amongst the members, to be our strengths. It was lovely! We were a “very impressive couple” – the only time we’ve been referred to in this way and one that has, you’ll understand, become common parlance (just between me and Hubby obv). Part of his feedback was also that the Panel members felt slightly hesitant about approving us for FFA, which was exactly right of them. The paperwork and our responses in the interview itself had obviously been clearly communicated, because the two us also felt/feel hesitant about FFA. So we felt valued, listened to, understood, and interested in for the first time, pretty much, in this whole process. How strange that our visit to Panel would prove to be the most positive part of the adoption process. 

So there we have it. Two different experiences, similar in multiple ways, at Approval Panel. Both with the same outcome; one a highlight, one a formality. I wonder if we’ll ever experience a third?

6 Steps to Surviving & Thriving at Panel

As I've not written a post on here for a while, I thought I'd better make my 'return' spectacularly helpful (!!), so here come my thoughts about surviving and thriving the horror that is Panel.

First off, then: it's not a horror. At all. It's not horrible, horrific, horror-related, or even horror-ish. I might even go as far as suggesting it's actually the opposite. Anti-horror, if you like. 

[I'll just pause here to say that, as with all I write, my ramblings are based largely on nothing more than our own experiences. Please don't think that when I write things here I'm assuming that everyone's experiences are similar, or that yours, if differing, is less valid.]

But yes, it's true - I think Panel can be, and often is, an affirming experience. You've come a long way: several months of home visits, preparing yourself for this process, getting your home and your heart ready week after week for lengthy, in-depth chats with a Social Worker who, if you're lucky, has stopped being a Social Worker and has become a Name. You've attended courses, tentatively/giddily/shyly/sobbingly told friends and family of your adoption plans. You've come through something that has led you to the point of choosing adoption.  And, all too quickly, you find yourself here, at the doorway of a conference room, with a table full of unfamiliar faces before you.

And at this point, here are some things you should try to remember:

• Your Social Worker won't have brought you to panel unless they were certain that you'd get approved. That would be silly.
• This panel of people want to approve you. Why wouldn't they?!
• You are not perfect. Don't pretend to be. You're you: a big-hearted, determined, bit bruised & battered, good person.
• The panel aren't perfect either. They're just normal people. (It's not like it's the Queen or Alan Sugar or someone)
• It's really short - you'll probably be in and out in under twenty minutes
• Once it's over you're contractually obliged to treat yourself to cake/McDonalds/ice cream/cocktails

Our experiences at Panel have been positive: positive in that we've been approved, but also positive in the actual experience of being at Panel. After all that time preparing, it's kind of nice to sit and talk and reflect, to share a bit of your story with a group of people who are there expressly to listen and learn about you (how often does that happen to you?!) 

A few weeks ago we went through Panel here, for our second adoption, and there was a lovely part of the meeting that was new to us - afterwards, the Panel Chair came out to share their recommendation decision with us, but before he got to that part he read out a list of positives that the Panel members had commented on in regards to our interview and our paperwork. It was so nice; we felt affirmed and valued and, frankly, a little bit proud. 

Don't let Panel freak you out. See if you can maybe, just maybe, enjoy it a little bit. Good luck!