An aside: Music was my first love...

TALK ABOUT, MMMM, POP MUSIC!

This blog is written as a contribution to the Music themed Weekly Adoption Shout Out at the Adoption Social website.

"Music was my first love
And it will be my last
Music of the future
And music of the past

To live without my music 
Would be impossible to do
For in this world of troubles
My music pulls me through..."

OK, fair enough, it may be a bit of gloriously overblown 70s prog bobbins from the team behind the Alan Parsons Project but the lyrics of this kitsch classic pretty much serve as a manifesto for my life. Sure, it may not be my first love... my lovely wife, my gorgeous little boy, my faith... they sit in pole position. But it is true to say that music gives them a pretty good run for the top spot!. Music has always been incredibly important to me. In my teenage years it was a comfort in hard times, a refuge and an inspiration.

An aside - Meet The Blogger at the Adoption Social

FAME AT LAST! WELL, SORT OF...

I am totally chuffed and honoured this week to be featured as the featured blogger on the Adoption Social's weekly "Meet The Blogger" page. The page takes the form of a quick questionnaire which looks to give a little (light-hearted) insight into the blogger contributors and Weekly Adoption Shout Out linkers. My entry can be found here: http://theadoptionsocial.com/meet-the-blogger/meet-the-blogger-adoption-journey-blog/

Chapter 32 - Des Res, could require some restoration

ANGELS AND DEMONS

It was a few days after our phone call with Denise that an envelope containing the locally produced list of children who were still waiting for adoption plopped onto the doormat. We opened it with a surprising amount of trepidation, possibly based on Denise's reluctance to give it to us. The colour photocopied booklet turned out, as we expected, to be a mini version of Be My Parent or Children Who Wait. On each page a couple of profiles of children or sibling groups were laid out with (mostly) a cherub-like photo and a short blurb describing the child or children. Sure, most of the profiles mentioned some level of developmental delay in their subject - the severity varying from child to child - but we were repeatedly told that was pretty much a given when considering kids for adoption.

Keisha is a happy 6 year old. She loves playing with her my little pony and trips to the park...

Daniel and Kimmi are the youngest of 6 siblings and are looking for a permanent home together in an adoption placement...

Jayden is a charming little boy with a bright smile who loves being outdoors. Although he does display some difficulties in responding to physical expressions of affection he has been improving greatly throughout his current foster placement...

However, one thing that the booklet did prove was that Denise had been telling the truth when she told us geography was getting in the way of us being matched... Profile after profile finished with the words "Cannot be placed in Ourtown." or "Cannot be placed in the Inlawsville area." Fair enough, between us and parents we did live in striking distance of two of our county's main population centres. That would have to have an effect on which children could never be placed with us.

Chapter 31 - Shopping from the baby catalogue

Every little helps

We first came across "Be My Parent" and "Children Who Wait" at one of the pre-preparation orientation evenings. I was browsing along the resources table at the back of the room looking at the Dan Hughes and Caroline Archer books when my eye spied what looked like a couple of women's magazines. Pictures of smiling happy faces beamed from the cover. "Oh well, I thought I'll have a browse and maybe do the adoption equivalent of the Cosmo quiz while I'm waiting." However, instead of an interesting article on Theraplay or facilitating attachment in adoptive placements I was faced by page after page of photos of munchkins. Each had a little write up about how lovely they were, how well they were  developing at their foster placement and how they were looking for a mummy and daddy. Gulp. It was all a bit overwhelming. This was the real face of adoption. The real little lives looking for a transformation and a brighter future...

Once the initial wave of emotion had worn off and I began scanning through the entries a second emotion started to rise up - a slight queasiness. Unconsciously I had found myself thinking "Awwww... He's sweet." "Oh, I'm not sure I'd want to take on three..." "Wouldn't it be nice to have a little brother and sister." However, all of a sudden it all felt a bit too much like flipping through the Argos catalogue. Baby buying.  Sibling shopping. Offspring ordering...

Chapter 29 – Post approval: Setting a direction

 

Finding a purpose
Having discovered ourselves in limbo it was clear that we needed a game plan. We were the third or fourth couple in our group to be approved into the adoption register and already a number of those were being matched. About a month or two after we had been approved we had another big adoption group get together. Several of the couples were in the throes of the last stages of the approval process - their haggard and concerned look was familiar to us. We'd seen it in the mirror often enough only a month or so before.

Another two couples were proudly sharing their matching experience, preparing for matching panel and thinking forward to introductions. For us it was still seemingly radio silence. Sure we had our ritual of reminding Denise that we still existed. However, despite the frustrations of seeing others ploughing ahead we were set on our patient approach.

Didn't make it any easier to cope with though.

Chapter 28 – Post approval: So what now?

Dancing in limbo

So, the last two years had been leading up to this moment. All our efforts seemed to have been funnelling down into a single hour in the offices of our Local Authority Children's Services department. And now here we were... Officially... legally...declared as being fit to be parents. The last two weeks waiting for the letter from Social services to confirm the Decision Officer's... well, decision... had been interminable. The days dragged by with us looking longingly at the letter box each time we walked past. Now here were were with the confirmation letter in our hands.

But what now? With the release had come a slight sense of emptiness and bewilderment. It was like our overriding purpose in life had been removed. 

There were a few things we did know. Now that we had received the official approval letter from the Authority's Decision Officer Denise would continue to be our social worker (although, of course her time was now focused on other active cases in her portfolio). We would be given temporary membership of Adoption UK. Post approval training courses would be available to us and we would be informed of them as they came up. We should now be considered as potential matches against available children and those who became available. And then it went quiet. Horribly quiet. Scarily quiet.

We started to wonder if it was something we had said...

Chapter 27 – Adoption Panel Day

The big day

And so the big day finally arrived... We had been doing a bit of preparation over the weekend before our panel date. Reading back through reports, checking out what the social workers considered to be our strengths and weaknesses as individuals, as a couple and as prospective parents for an adopted child. We thought through a few possible questions and how we might respond and then discussed how we might try to box and cox between each other when speaking to the panel. We were aware that we should ensure that both of us had a good chance to speak, that we shouldn't cut across each other or hog the conversation... We set out strategies and game plans.

Then it struck us just how odd it was that we were working out such definitive strategies for an experience for which we had absolutely no precedent in our lives to date. Just how would the meeting go? Sure, Denise had talked us through the format. We would arrive at the social services building at the appointed time and Denise would meet us and take us to a waiting room. Once the panel had a short time to discuss our case they would invite Denise in to discuss the case in more detail and to hear her recommendations. This should take around half an hour - give or take... After a further short discussion we would be invited in and the panel would ask us a few questions. After we returned to our waiting room the panel would make a final decision and... that would be that. Maybe.

Chapter 26: Paperwork and panels

Full disclosure...

Home Study is a pretty intensive process and there is a lot of work to get through. The paperwork which is sent to panel is pretty extensive (I do wonder just how much of it actually gets read - but still, it's there on file to prove that the Social Services have properly covered all the bases should anything go wrong...). But panel is the huge looming target towards which you are inexorably heading. The crunch day...

In good old X-Factor results programme style, therefore, perhaps I should artificially build up the tension a bit before I tell you about the day itself and the outcome. So... (Adopts Ant and Dec Geordie accent). The winner is... Dum dum dum... Dum dum dum...

Well, to fill in the time, perhaps it would be useful to look at just what goes to panel and who, in the case of our Local Authority, they are...

Chapter 25 – The Home Straight: Home-study visits continued

Welcome to our humble abode... 

Our panel date was only a few weeks away and all our discussions with Denise over the time since filling in the matching matrix had concentrated on dotting "T's" and crossing "I's". Or at least that is what it felt like. 

Every day or so my wife would get a call or a text, "So, was it your parents who were freedom fighters in the Guatemalan civil war and Derek's who ran away to join the circus?" "No, it's the other way round. Oh, and by the way, my husband's name isn't Derek!" It's the type of detail that you'd think might have stuck... And so it continued. You had to admire Denise's commitment to getting the details and the flavour right.

Still, it wasn't a surprise that when Denise emailed us her report on us to proof read there were still a lot of mix ups and little errors. Still, that is what proof reading is for, I suppose. 

Chapter 24 – Entering the (Matching) Matrix: Home-study visits continued

The final(ish) furlong

Have you ever wanted to feel like a really callous, heartless heel? Ever wanted to prove to yourself that you don't have a shred of compassion and common decency hidden anywhere in the deepest recesses of your soul? Then I suggest that you apply to become an adopter. 

"Hang on a minute," I hear you saying, " What about all this therapeutic parenting business and all this playful, accepting, caring, empathic stuff you've been banging on about? What about giving a young life a new start in a forever family? What about all the noble, rewarding stuff?" 

Well yes, of course... All that stuff is true and I didn't say you actually were a complete heel. I just asked if you wanted to feel  like one.

Chapter 23 – Cross References: Home-study visits continued

SCREAMING FEEDBACK!

In the workplace it is pretty normal to expect to be appraised on a regular basis. The current fashion for 360 degree feedback means that we're regularly asking all and sundry to comment on us as workers and as people. Conducting a 360 degree feedback appraisal among your family and friends is somewhat rarer. Doubly so when you are really not supposed to have any clues about what they have said about you.

And so here we are at this stage of the process. The bit where our family and friends spill the dirt about how rubbish we'll be as parents. Erm... sorry, I mean provide extra colour about us as a couple and how we are likely to be as parents... 

I've already talked in a previous chapter of this story about the twists and turns we experienced in choosing our referees. The choosing in itself is a particularly stressful process, full of scope to second guess yourself and indulge in conspiracy theories about that your family and friends really think about you. The most striking thing was, given that the number of family members you could nominate was strictly limited, just how hard it was to think up six or eight nominees to be referees.

We're lucky that, being regular members of a church community, we've got a wide range of friends. Still, which of them are qualified to comment on us as people and parents? Despite this large community, your intimate friends - those who really know you - are actually a select bunch. Those whom you would trust to give the best impression to a stranger assessing you for the most important selection process in your life is an even more select group. So despite a pretty huge number of potential people to choose from the decision to plump for just six was agonisingly hard. Once again, it's another part of the process where the stakes seem to be so incredibly high and the pressure to make the right decision (whatever that might be) weighs heavily on your shoulders.

And so we're back in cape-swishing, moustache-twirling melodrama once again. But that's the reality of the adoption process. The self imposed and process imposed pressures seem so very, very great from inside looking out. Wood for the trees, I know... But the ability to see things that clearly while going through assessment is a rare gift. It's surprising just how often you end up feeling like that silent movie heroine; struggling, tied to the railway tracks, waiting for someone to rescue you while the system stands there laughing and rubbing its hands.

Anyway, office dragon shaped blips notwithstanding, we had made our choices of referee and now it was Denise's turn to make some choices... Which three of our referees would she interview? Well, one of our referees had moved to Brussels for work a few months before and there was no way that the travel budget was going to run to a ride on the Eurostar! So that narrowed the field down. My wife's parents were a no brainer choice and they lived in the same town as Denise so that helped with the mileage claims too! Our best friends, Issy's parents, seemed like a good choice as they could comment first hand on how we had performed in our favourite Uncle and Aunt duties. We would have liked to have nominated my wife's brother and wife as we were godparents to their now teenage boy but that would have hit the travel budget again so that just left two equally qualified referees... The process of choosing between them wasn't quite eenie-meenie-miney-mo but it wasn't far off... So, the team sheet was as follows... Mum and Dad, Issy's parents and Dick and Katie (an older couple we'd known for nigh on fifteen years). On this occasion our remaining referees, Michael and Suzie, would need to sit it out on the subs' bench.

We agreed to phone the victims that afternoon to warn them that they should expect a call from Denise to set up a mutually convenient time for a chat. And so the principle of best-laid-plans struck again. It turned out that Dick and Katie were off the following week for a grand tour of relative visiting in the States. They'd be gone for about 6 weeks - perfectly matching the time left in Denise's diary for doing the visits and writing up the reports. 

So Dick and Katie were shown the red card and Michael and Suzie were told to get warming up on the touch line. The interviews went ahead and Denise started writing up summaries of her conversations. And we, of course, plugged each of the interviewees for information on what had been said.

We weren't meant to see the written reports which our referees had sent in a few months earlier. These were never shared as we prepared for panel. Neither were the reports on the interviews. However, some of our friends did send us copies of what they had written about us. Fortunately it was all pretty glowing stuff and followed a standard questionnaire format aimed at drawing out the apposite facts about is (along with a few which raised a smile or an eyebrow). There were a number which were pretty predictable. How were we as a couple? How much had they seen of us interacting with children? What did they know about why we wanted to adopt? How much did we seem to have really prepared ourselves mentally for the changes parenthood would bring? How did they think we'd cope with kids? What did they think we'd find hardest about the transition?

Then there were the questions about our criminal records. Were they aware of any? Personally, I'd have to plead guilty to an Emerson Lake and Palmer LP and ask for several Status Quo singles to be taken into consideration! There were questions about whether there was any reason why we'd pose a risk to children... Well, I suppose they DO have to ask...

In parallel with this, Denise was data gathering from other sources... She visited the nursery where my wife was volunteering to interview the senior staff, she interviewed the leaders of the crèche at church and she contacted our employers (to check that we were who we really were and that we did actually have jobs, I suppose...).

We now had our panel date and from here on in a lot of our interactions with Denise seemed to concentrate on fact checking as she started writing up all her final reports. However, there was one more big discussion to have...

Chapter 22 – Out and about again: Home-study visits continued

A different journey

Our first day out at Denise's behest had gone well. Our report had been written, handed in and thoroughly discussed at one of our home study meetings. Now we were out and about again... This time we were off to see some parents who had adopted a little girl a few years previously. 

The drive from our suburban surroundings into the equivalent of our area's well heeled stockbroker belt saw the houses we drove past getting larger and larger. Eventually we pulled into a small, countrified cul de sac and knocked on one of the doors. We were ushered in and settled into the living room, admiring a large and well kept garden through the French windows. The obligatory cups of tea were made and we started our chat.

Chapter 21 – Out and about: Home-study visits continued...

Didn't we have a luvverly time...

Our home-study with Denise wasn’t all Earl Grey tea and nice biscuits in the living room. No, we even got to go out on school trips! How exciting! Part of the process was to get out there and actually meet some people with first hand experience of what adoption was all about. An opportunity to quiz them on all the stuff that the manuals and the training materials don’t tell you. Denise said that she had arranged three trips out for us. A visit to a foster carer, a visit to a pair of adoptive parents and a special mums and toddlers group for adopted children which was run by a local charity and which worked closely with the Children's Services team in our Local Authority.

It would give us an opportunity to chat to some people who had been through the process before and ask any questions we might have. Our side of the deal was that we would need to write up a report on each visit, setting out what happened and our thoughts about what we discussed. Of course, we also assumed that the flip side was that our hosts would also be writing their own little reports on us. So there was pressure to make a good impression. Some homework was clearly needed in advance of each visit and a long list of deeply insightful questions was drawn up.

Chapter 20 – Play up and play the game: Home-study visits continued

Jolly Hockey Sticks!

When it comes down it this adoption lark’s one great big game. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trivialising it in the slightest. It’s a deadly serious and life-changing game. However, the process by which one enters into the world of adoption is a game. And like any game it has its own rules. It has its own skills and techniques. It has areas where you can you can cut corners and other areas where you just have to buckle down and play the game.

To say that there are a few hoops to jump through along the road to adopting would be the grossest of understatements. Sometimes the whole thing seemed like one great big, ever-changing hoop. I can understand it. For any organisation the personal and corporate responsibility for the outcome of decisions and actions is a heavy weight to bear. That’s heavy enough when the decisions are over some corporate investment portfolio or a business proposition. But social workers are literally playing with people’s lives. They have to get their decisions as right as possible because when they go wrong they can go disastrously wrong. The errors which social services make can literally be matters of life and death. Just look at the case of "Baby P".

Chapter 19 – Lots of homework and a reunion: Home-study visits continued

Here we are again!

That the home-study was intense and draining was a given. It also seemed a little random as time went on. Denise had pretty much got a handle on what we were like as individuals and as a couple. Once again we continued our over-riding policy of balancing openness with discretion. Cooperation with circumspection.

There were a lot of forms and formulas which needed to be filled in. All of these would be retained to form part of the Adoption Panel’s briefing pack on us. We kept our own copies and they eventually filled an A4 lever arch file pretty much to capacity. They seemed to range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

We spent a happy hour while Denise walked around our house filling in a detailed Health and Safety questionnaire which seemed to run to about a hundred pages. Luckily we’re not affluent enough to have a swimming pool in the back garden and we don’t own any pets which are required to be registered under the Dangerous Dogs Act (not even a slightly tetchy gerbil) so that saved at least three or four pages. We did confirm which way up we put the cutlery in the dishwasher and promised to see to the strings on the Venetian blinds though.

Chapter 18 – Childhood memories: Home-study visits continued

Yeah Baby!

“For the first time in my life I’m a complete ‘babe magnet’!” Denise looked perplexed. This probably wasn’t the response which she had expected when she turned to me and asked “So, how are you enjoying helping out at the crèche?” My other half was suppressing giggles but she knew that it was a totally true statement. I was a bona fide, 100% “babe magnet”. I fixed Denise with a confident stare and said, “Yup! It turns out that if you’re less than two years old I’m completely irresistible.”


The last two or three weeks I’d been in the enviable position of having several toddlers almost fighting over my attention. Sam was just over eighteen months old and he didn’t like being left by his mummy. The only way to stop him crying the place down (the ONLY WAY!!!) was for me to cuddle him and introduce him to all the animals painted on the walls around the room. Similarly Mark, barely one yet, had declared that my the crook of my left arm was the cradle which he required for his morning nap. No other would do. This left Chewitel (between two and a half and three) and Isobel (only just under two) in an awkward position. I recall one Sunday morning sitting in the creche room with Sam in one arm and Mark in the other while both Chewitel and Izzy were trying to climb onto my lap too. My lap’s just not that big. There was a good thing to be had here and it was already being hogged by the youngsters. To be fair they had their reasons. Izzy was the daughter of some really good friends (and in fact a pair of our referees). She was practically a favourite niece and had expectations to be fulfilled. Chewitel was a needy little boy. Overly inward and reluctant to communicate his needs, verbally or otherwise. He always looked ashamed of himself and took out anger and possessiveness on the children around him in a pushy, aggressive manner. Some of this was purely normal toddler behaviour but somehow it seemed amplified.

The Name Game - a response to The Guardian's article "What's in a name?"

An aside...

This week an article in the Guardian by Fraser McAlpine has been causing something of a stir in the adoption blogosphere. From my own reading of the article it seems to be a grossly misinformed, poorly argued and shoddy piece of journalism. Which is a shame because, ironically, I happen to agree with the main premise which Mr McAlpine is slowly edging towards.

Names are important. Identity is important. You meddle with it at your peril and only with very good reason.

The article concludes... “Can't we just give the children new names?

“Unless there's an issue of security, in which case identity takes second place to personal safety, the answer to that question should most often be no. And the reason is simple: an adopted child should never grow up ashamed of where they came from. Otherwise there's a risk that they will develop void people of their own, and that's a competition all parents can well do without.”

Hear hear, well said that man. Unfortunately in getting to that conclusion Mr McAlpine manages to misrepresent both adoptive parents and the adoption preparation process. And insult adopters and social workers into the process. This is from someone who, apparently, is a member of an Adoption Panel. For the uninitiated, the Adoption Panel is the semi independent body within an adoption agency or local authority which takes decisions on who should and should not be approved to join the the adoption register and what adoption placements should and should not be approved.

He should know better.