Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 June 2006 21:00:06
well, had the visit. 2 very intense hours gulping tea for comfort, sitting very close to my husband and occasionally stroking my cat. phew! i can't say i feel any better about the whole process now. we were hoping to come out of the meeting reassured, however as MS was made an issue from the very start, we really didn't have that reassurance.
It was acknowledged that it must have been frustrating going through the medicals and we "could offload" about it if we wanted, but when we tried to express our concerns about the way things were handled, we felt that we met with defensiveness. Then when I said something like, oh nevermind, that bits over now, we were told that we will still have hurdles to jump. About my MS, i ask? yes, we're told.
When we asked for more info on that we had the matching proceedure explained to us (which we more or less knew already).
- we have a big ole Form F filled out about us
- children in the system have a Form E (or whatever they've just changed its name to) about them
- we have a social worker
- children each have a social worker
- we have to get approved by adoption panel when our form F is complete
- child's social worker is presented with 2 or 3 form Fs
- child's social worker decided whether any of the parents presented on the form Fs sound suitable
- child's social worker contacts the social worker of the parents they decide on
- parents' social worker give them (us) the child's form E for consideration
- parents say "yes we'd like to proceed with the match" or "no we don't think it's right".
and there's more after that, but that's the main bit around the MS thing, cause basically what we were being told while having that explained to us, was that even though my doctor declared me fit to parent, the Independent Medical Advisor (IMA) decared me fit to parent, the agency declared me fit to parent and by the end of our form F process we know our social worker will know that I am fit to parent, we were more or less being told that if a child's social worker is presented with 2 or 3 form Fs and 1 of them says MS on it and the others don't have an "issue" that it will hurt our chances. She said that people (children's social workers) will have preconceived ideas about what that means and think that it means 'wheelchair' or 'slurred speach' or something.
SO WHAT IF IT DID MEAN THAT??? could you be any more offensive? Is she saying that she does not think wheelchair users etc can parent or is she saying that she assumes that all the other social workers out there think that? I'm hoping that she's just being pessimistic and thinking the later. I think she was saying the later, becasue even though she seemed a bit blunt and perhaps a bit black and white, she really didn't seem biggoted. no, i'm going to keep faith in her and give her another chance. it was just all phrased insensitively.
At this stage of the meeting we started biting our tongues becasue we didn't think swearing at the social worker would improve our chances of adopting any.
We're going to try to just go into the next meeting in a fortnight's time with an open mind and hope we get better feelings from it. Next meeting is the one where we have to talk about our relationship. Which we're hoping is dealt with a little more sensitively.