04-Feb 2010

Still waiting for the phone call.  Nothing to report.  Very frustrated and at the end of my patience.  Wondering how we will cope with having to deal with this over the weekend if we don't hear anything tomorrow :(

29-Jan 2010 part two!

Our friends G&F found out today that they have been officialy linked to a little boy!  They are going to be parents, how exciting!!!   Congratulations to you both, we are soo pleased and very proud of you; you will be fantastic parents and will make a wonderful family!!!  Yippety doo dah yippety ay, my oh my what a wonderful day!  Plenty of sunshine coming your way.  Wonderful feelings, wondeful day!!!

29-Jan 2010

We have had a couple of phone calls from our social worker wanting the homework she asked us for in December.  Remember that she said in January we wouldn't be asked for it until after the Placement Order has been granted?!  But hey they have it all now.  The court hearing is due to start on Monday and it will be one day next week, we hope, that we find out if the Placement Order has been granted.  If it has, then we are planning to go to Matching Panel on the 5th March with introductions later in the month.  If it is not granted then we will have to assess what happens next, depending on the reasons for it not being granted.  Let's hope it's the former!

Friends of ours G&F have been visited by social workers about a child and are hoping to hear today if they are going to go forward with the match.  Fingers crossed!

R&A have now been to the Celebration Adoption Court Hearing earlier this month, which I was priviledged to be a part of.  It was a brilliant morning :)  they are now getting on the with task of being a happy family and not having and social workers visits - hurrah!

A&I are still waiting and waiting - we know how that feels!  They have snippets of news and flurries of activity but nothing concrete just yet.  We are rooting for you!

Goose and Gander are hoping to hear this month about being accepted and starting prep groups, let's hope you hear sooner rather than later!

Lindyloodles and co are knee-deep in home study and all the trials and tribulations that brings.  We feel for you, it's so intrusive isn't it?

Moonpiglet is having a home visit from social workers this month to decide if they will be accepted by the agency to go forward from prep groups and home study.  Let me know how it went!

25-Jan 2010

The title of this update should really be 'Bored!'  Boring, nothing happening, no news (which I assume is good news), no activity, nothing.  Just picture tumbleweed whistling through a deserted street and you get the idea. Boring, boring, boring and I'm really bored too :(

11-Jan 2010

We had some news given to us on the 8th from an 'unofficial source' that the birth family has withdrawn their opposition to the adoption!  We think this is over and above the news we heard in November, but we are not sure, so we are a bit confused.

Our social worker rang Mungo today.  She said that the hearing on the 23rd December was very negative about the birth family.  She also said that it will all go quiet now (!) and we won't hear anything until after the final hearing on or after the 1st February. Then there will then be a flurry of activity and a very short time to get everything ready for Matching Panel.

So this update is very vague and quite anti-climactic.  We were expecting a gush of positivety but this has left us feeling rather deflated.  Which in a way is a bit silly because everything we have heard is positive.  But we are deflated, angry and fed up with this whole process.  It's really getting us down and we don't know how much more we can take.

03-Jan 2010

We spoke with our social worker on 30th November and it's official: we have now stopped family finding!  Wooo hooo! We were due to go to a massive family finding event hosted by the Adoption Register on the 2nd December, so we have declined their invitation.  A shame really, because Mary was planning to meet up with some friends who are going.  To G&F and A&I we hope all goes well and you find your little ones (if you haven't already!)

We have picked up the paperwork that we gave back to our social worker when our link failed.  In the paperwork was a rather poor photocopy of a photo of each of the three little ones.  Now I have something physical to 'hold on to'.  I have taken a sneaky peek at them from time to time and it feels so natural to see them.  I really want to share the photos, but of course we just can't do that.

This remind me of Facebook.  I would dearly love to share our photos of our kiddies when they come along.  Share them with you and the whole world.  Like when birth parents spash their kiddies all over their profiles.  But we will never be able to do that.  Not at birthdays, Christmas or holidays, for fear of the birth family finding us and trying to take back the children.  Mungo feels this more than I do because he can't protect us all whilst he is at work and if he worst happens that they somehow find us it is most likely me that will be confronted.

That shows another reason to keep this blog anonymous and be ultra-super-careful when commenting on public message boards.  It is a hard balancing act: one the one hand you want to share your news and tell people names, share photos, and so on, then on the other hand you have to protect the anonymity of your children and let them tell their story to whoever they want to - whilst you try to keep them safe!

Our social worker has given us some dates for our diary: 23rd December the paper assessment of the birth family’s final plan is to be heard in court.  She advised that it would be unlikely to hear the outcome before Christmas.  4th Jan is when the Care Plan has to be updated and submitted.  1st Feb for the final hearing to agree the care plan.  If all goes well, the social workers will apply for the Placement Order to be granted at that hearing.  The hearing may take several days.  5th Mar for Matching Panel and introductions will take place some time to be agreed after that.

We have been given some homework too!  To be completed and sent back to our social worker in mid-Jan is an update to our finances, a bank statement, an update on our childcare experience, an update on Mungo’s work and promotion, and an update on Mary’s relationship with her sister that has been difficult in recent years but is improving by the day, it seems!  We will also have to meet with the foster carer and the medical adviser some time.  Our social worker feels that they may have to be held before the court hearing as there will just not be enough time for everyone to do everything within a month.

We had some pretty distressing news to deal with aside from the adoption, during the first three weeks of December, which meant we put everything to one side to deal with it and support our family.  As such, a phone call from our social worker on the 17th focussed us back on the situation.  She advised that due to the agency shut-down over Christmas and the annual leave of the family finding social worker we would most definitely not hear anything about the interim court hearing on the 23rd December.  What she was able to tell us was that “the social workers had had sight of the paper assessment and it was very negative about the birth family.”  Whatever that means!  Anyway, it is good news for us and meant there was less pressure over the holiday period.  We should hear the outcome on or after the 4th January.  That's tomorrow!

28-Nov

"What's this?"  I hear you cry!  "A post from Mary?"   "Yes, tis I!"  I reply.  :D

Here's a snapshot of what we have been up to since mid October:

• When I last made an update this is where we were with family finding: Group one - meeting on 30th October.  Group two - family finding underway mid November.  Group three - family finding to start in January
• Group one: we decided not to go ahead with the meeting as it was too soon after our previous knockback
• Groups two and three: we have heard nothing
• We were given the paperwork on a set of three children which we read and felt that we could progress them.  We are awaiting a response from their social worker
• We found a sibling group of two in the Be My Parent publication and asked for further information on those.

This is were we were up to until we had a meeting with our social worker on Wednesday.  We had a request to meet with our social worker, which is unusual as we don't meet up unless there is something specific to address, so our curiosity was piqued.  She advised that she needed to "discuss where we are with family finding and to give updates."  Little did we know that she had a little surprise in store for us.

Readers of this blog may recall that we had a link with a group of three children earlier in the year that fell through because the birth family came up with some devious plan to syphon money from the state by way of claiming for 'items' to keep the children within the wider family network.  The judge decided that this 'plan' required assessment and the social workers felt that it would probably go ahead.  So with the heaviest of hearts we pulled out :(

At the latest court hearing for the assessment of the plan it was reported that the plan had fallen through as the wider family have decided not to progress the Special Guardianship.  The birth parents now want their own assessment done again and this assessment will be carried out as a paper exercise and will be submitted for the next interim court case in late December.  The feeling is that because a paper exercise is to be carried out it is not going to carry any weight.  The judge said that the birth family have now had enough chances and that the children had been in care long enough.  He (I am assuming it was a he) wanted to grant the Placement Order straight away!  Because of legal formalities it won't happen like that, so the original date of the final hearing in February still stands.  And, for now, nothing stands in the way of it being granted.  Yes we have heard that one before!

So the children's social workers have started family finding again and true to their word they have come to us first and asked if we would still be interested in them.  They have still got us earmarked as the only family they are interested in and they won't do any more family finding unless we say no.  We said we are still interested, but as we have been here before we will continue to family find until the Placement Order has been granted. Our social worker supports that decision.

On the one hand this is fabulous news, the best ever and we were jumping up and down! And on the other we were treating it with extreme caution because we had our fingers badly burnt.  There is a lot of time between now and February with the potential for it all to go wrong again.  Because we said we would continue family finding, our social worker gave us some information on a group of two children.  It has been sat on the side for two days and Mary can't look at it.  Why?  Because we feel we would be comparing them with with the original three.

So we have had a rethink; we spoken some more with our social worker and got some additional information from the family finding social worker.  We have decided not to continue family finding at all and to give ourselves 100% to these children.  We feel that it would not be fair on other children and social workers if we continue family finding, as we would just be comparing them with these three.  When we originally told our social worker we wanted to continue family finding she felt that we would not be giving 100% to any other children and she would feel uncomfortable forwarding information to us. So she prefers our latest decision.

So after everything that has happened we are now in the same situation as we were on the afternoon of the 24th July, the day of the bombshell.  We are 100% committed to Midge, Tidge and Squidge ;)  We have the interim hearing late December and the final court hearing early February.  There may not be very much to update you on as the weeks go by so I will try to update you on our friends' journeys (completely anonymously, of course) and general adoption information.

Signing off for now a happy bunny!