2nd Opinion Visit

Today was the next visit, it seems such a long time since we have seen a social worker but the nerves were back and the hoover was out in plenty of time. Today’s visit was a different social worker. Her task was to take the report already written by our social worker and make sure it was an accurate reflection of us.

For me it was an exciting visit as it should have confirmed that the report was finished (with the exception of her comments). Sadly the report, although an epic already in excess of 100 pages is still under construction with bits and pieces that need to be completed and included before the deadline of 20 August.

We got our copy of this first draft yesterday and it was a mammoth task to read it and make sure the details were correct. Happily, with the exception of a couple of little errors it was all correct and it really was an accurate reflection of us and our lives. It was also lovely to see paragraphs taken from the home work assignments we completed over the home study assessment as they were our thoughts and feelings in our own words.

One paragraph that we wrote was this one:

“Adoption means a lot to us – firstly because it gives us the chance to be parents, to provide for children and in turn watch them grow and achieve their full potential, whatever that might be. We are also a little in awe of the fact that we will have been through a rigorous assessment process and from that, deemed suitable to be parents. It is so very different from deciding to have a baby ‘naturally’ in that any one can do that. We have made the active choice to be parents, to be parents to special children and have made the effort to go through a gruelling process to do so. We entered into adoption in a very selfish way, we wanted children, we wanted to complete our family and we saw all the good things we could give to a child in the terms of basic needs, a good lifestyle and a better future. This process has shown us that our focus needs to be on the children, regardless of what we want or need: they have to come first in all things”.

I feel like this says it all.
Back to this visit - 2 and a half hours later, a lot of questions and another tour of the house and garden and this social worker left happy with the report, happy with our answers and happy to support us moving forwards.

What it does mean is that we are still on for the approval panel in September as our completed report had to be submitted 2 weeks prior - the next deadline being the 20 August.