Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 October 2007 12:49:26
when i was 8, my older sister joined the u.s. marrine corps and went to boot camp. her career with the marrines didn't come to fruition, but that's not my story. the lasting memory i have from her letters home at that time was she said that the most frustrating thing was that the drill instructors were always shouting at them to hurry up. or more accurately, to HURRY UP!. but she said that after they, the privates, had all hurried up and done whatever they were meant to do. . . nothing ever happened. they just had to wait. and wait and wait. so she could never quite figure out wbat all the hurry was about. "hurry up and wait" she called it.
well, isn't that just a picture of the adoption system in reverse? no sooner do i blog to tell you that no, nothing's happening, we were going to be taking it easy after our loss, i was looking for jobs (by the way, i didn't get that one i interviewed for... once again came in second!), and we were going to enjoy a nice quiet Christmas with Mr. Dot's family . . . . . . . when
BAM!!!
some kind of nuclear adoption bomb blows up in our midst and the fallout started settling around us before we knew it.
24 september - i blog that nothing is happening and we will be taking it easy til the new year
25 september - call from E (our SW) giving no details, but asking us to do some research
26 september - call to E from us, saying we would like more information about whatever she was thinking. E tells us to enquire about a little one who's profile will be one of those featured at the event (more info below) we would attend on
27 september - we attend an event run annually by our local consortium. a local consortium is a collective group of local authorities (local governments. city/town/county social services departments are in local governments which are called 'authorities' here in the UK). i will try to explain. If you already understand what a local consortium does, you might want to skip this next paragraph.
for example say the country of Atlantis had two regions, North and South and that North Atlantis was split into 4 counties, A, B, C and D and that South Atlantis had 3 counties, E, F and G. Adoption Social Work teams would exist in each county and would assess both children who need adopting and parents who want to adopt. the team in county A would generally not be able to place a child in county A with parents who also live in A, for child protection reasons. So the adoption team in county A looks to B, C, and D (and then maybe even to E, F and G) for potential parents for their child. To make this task a bit easier for the adoption teams in the whole of North Atlantis, A, B, C and D get together and form a consortium so that information and posible links between children and parents become a bit easier. South Atlantis might form a different consortium in their region. Adoption becomes a little bit easier bureaucratically when it happens within a region. This was one of the difficulties with our last possible link, as she was outside of our own consortium and region.
ok, back to the timeline.
27 September - we attend an event held by our local consortium, where all the member counties attend and set up a stall at a conference venue. approved adoptive parents who are waiting to be linked with a child (that's us) are invited by the consortium to attend. so the parents (again, that's us) attend and go to each stall and talk to different children's social workers about the children they are looking to place. considerations are made in any decision to 'express interest' in a child to both a child's needs and the parents' ability to meet those needs. in other words, you can't really persue a possible link with a child whose needs you can not meet. however, if you can, then you have the opportunity to speak to social workers who work directly with that child and get a bit more information.
this is not the usual way that 'links' are made between parents and children in consortiums, and as indicated by Smudgie's comment on the last post "I've always felt a little relieved that our consortium doesn't do these adoption events - it saves me having to think what I think about them." these events have pros AND cons about them and can have a little bit of controversy.
but as we were alerted by E to a child we may want to find out a bit more about, we went to the county's stall, looked at their profile and spoke to one of child's social workers. this went extremely well. surprisingly well. swimmingly well. in fact we'd probably say that we hit it off with CSW1 (child's SW #1). but we didn't want to get too excited yet and decided as we had only just got to the event, we would go to all the other counties with an open mind and see if there were any other possibilities for us. there were, but by the end of the evening we decided that the first child we spoke to CSW1 about was the possibility we wanted to persue.
at this stage CSW1 agreed to let us see a short video of the child. CSW2 took us to a little private room where we sat in front of a laptop and had our hearts stollen away. and this is also when CSW2 let the question slip "oh, so are you the couple who were already linked with this child?"
errr. . . that we had not been told. but yes, later it was confirmed that just a few days before the event the consortium had made a possible link between us and this child in the usual way, and E didn't want to tell us, because she wanted to give us a chance to go to the event and see what came out of it and what our feelings were at the end of the evening. she was very aware that there could be other children featured at the event who we felt made a better match with us. but we didn't. how very exciting.
which brings us to
4 October - exactly a week after the event and having met CSW1, E came out to see us with an anonymised version of the child's form that held all of the detailed information that had been collected about the child and the child's birth parent situation. (those are things we can say nothing about. this blog is only about our own journey so far, not about any particular children.) after this meeting with E, we still wanted to proceed.
8 October- we get a call to say that the next step meeting which would be with E, and us, and CSW1, CSW2 & CSW3 at our house would take place in the afternoon on
9 October - which was yesterday. wow. 4 SWs and us. in OUR little house. they came to our house, we made tea and put out buiscuits. we asked and answered questions. what a massive, big, important and overwhelming meeting that was and by the end of it, it was clear that everyone was still happy for things to progress further to make a match between us and this child.
this is not the end of the line for us yet. there are still lots of reports to write and meetings to be had and steps to go through and another panel to attend and get a decision from and then another 'decision maker' to ratify it before we can start planning introducitons. but the fact is, we are now in a position to be confident about planning introductions. we have even SEEN a video of the little one who it looks most likely will very soon be our little one.
it has only been 2 weeks and 2 days since my last entry when i said "all activity has come to a halt for now"
and God laughed.