I have been slacking. Well and truly slacking. I don't quite know why, as I tend to intersperse my working day with spurts of blog- or forum-reading and I've been feeling a little out of sorts with a couple of my regular forums, but have kept on reading them despite this. So I totally missed what was going on in May's life and feel very, very sorry about this.
I think things are just very slow and vague for us at the moment. Five years on, and we are still not much further. The social worker is nice, and actually has a sense of humour (which is apparently rare). Although we are now sure that the US route is our first choice, she did ask us to justify this, not because she thinks we are wrong, but because in her words "I don't want you wasting your money". We came away even more convinced that we were right: although they initially said they'd take us on if we were open to children aged over 2, she is now saying over-3s only; I would really like to parent at least one child under this age. But more than this, she seems to think that the children available for adoption in the UK are moving more and more towards older and older children, and towards multi-sibling placements - they seem to place few singletons any more. I was also slightly amused to find out she didn't really have any idea how old Mr Spouse is, and like most people thought he was much younger than he is - him being older means we'd be less likely to be chosen by a placing authority for younger children, though the agency takes the age of the younger partner only into consideration.
She again recommended that we have a word with our local authority, who are much more likely to place younger children, but frankly we want to get on with it at this stage. I am reserving the right to see if we could adopt a second child through them, but for now we are going ahead with this and have booked in 5 of the 8 home study sessions we need. Some of it seems rather irrelevant to us, so I'm trying to hold my tongue; I think she can also see that I'm on the same page and do know something about the whole business. We had an interesting discussion about foetal alcohol exposure, for example. Sounds like we should finish this part around February.
First up, I think, is the Adult Attachment Interview. Joy.
2 comments:
Glad to hear the SW was nice, must make a big difference. Hopefully things won't drag too much from here.
Oh, it BURNS that this process has already taken you FIVE years. ('Just' adopt. BAH).
(Thank you being there. I don't think you missed anything at all, I felt you turned up to be supportive and kind just at the right moment.)
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