Have had the first two days of our adoption preparation course. Not surprisingly it is almost exactly the same as our fostering course, except longer. At least we don't feel quite so much like we've been repeatedly whacked after the session on abuse/safety which we had today.
It's just such a long way from home and not really new to us (even the social work stuff that was new to both of us last time).
It is pretty much exclusively geared to UK domestic adopters from foster care, which isn't too surprising, though at least one other couple wants to adopt from overseas (they are of an ethnicity which is difficult to match in the UK but one of the fairly common sending countries). Much of the foster care agenda is useful for adoption from an institution overseas, though, and we'll get individual sessions which are country-specific anyway. If we'd never done the foster care course this WOULD be a helpful course, but we did, and it isn't really.
We're still keeping a slightly open mind about our 3rd option - the UK foster care one - but really moving away from it, I think. If we wanted to have an under-2 placed with us, it might just be possible in the UK, but probably not with this agency, and possibly not with some other agencies/local authorities, partly because of Mr Spouse's age. I think we will ask one last time whether there are any circumstances in which this might happen (e.g. if we took siblings) but not really that confident about it.
There have been a few interesting or fun moments - e.g. discussing adoption in the media - "Everyone knows about adoption!" as one of the social workers put it. Yes, they do - they know what's in the media - everyone knows that social workers snatch babies, and that no white British couples are ever approved to adopt in the UK...
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