The Actual Course - Day 2

Day 2 was yesterday and I was pleased when we arrived in plenty of time and were able to be a lot more relaxed – I don’t think we were alone in being nervous last week as many of the other couples were a lot chattier and it was nice to get to know people a bit better.

This subject matter for the morning session was contact. We covered the different types of contact (direct and letterbox) and we covered how they were arranged, managed and filtered. The guest speakers were the 2 social workers that form the contact team for our agency and they were very open, honest and interesting. They also provided us with a really insightful pack of information that included sample letters, sample agreements of contact between birth families and adoptive families and guidance on social networking. 

The morning seemed to fly past but we were ready for lunchtime when it came round. This week there was more food than we needed and some sandwiches! I decided to make wraps with various fillings which went down well.

The afternoon started with another guest speaker, this time a children’s social worker who was also very interesting and she really hit home how careful they are with matches and the children they have in the care system. We did an exercise about the links children form using string – a piece held by the people in the link and then cut with scissors when the link ended. It was very sad to see how many severed links children could potentially have from just a few moves. The child I portrayed in the exercise had a birth mum and dad, 2 step fathers, 2 siblings, 2 sets of foster parents and adoptive parents plus a grandma and social worker and at the end of the exercise the only string whole was the one to the adoptive parents – all the other links had been cut.

There were other topics discussed after this and we touched on abuse and how to deal with the disclosures of abuse. I do think that it is right and necessary that we have to discuss these things in detail especially as there is a risk we might be placed with a child that has suffered some form of abuse but it is still very upsetting to hear about real situations where children have been abused.

We ended the day with a request that we each bring something next week that means something to us and that we can talk about. We also have our CRB forms to complete and return next week with the evidence we need which mean I have something to work on.