Chapter 34 - The great reformation, part 2

DIFFERENT STAGES

As of July last year a new, revised adoption process came into force. New? Well, newish. Many of the elements remain much the same as under the previous system but to a much compressed timescale which aims to get prospective adopters to panel and placed with children more quickly.

After an initial, informal part of the process where those interested in adoption are encouraged to find out more about what adoption entails (and are resourced to do so) the more formal part of the process begins. Compressed into about 6 months, rather than the previous 8-9, this is split into two distinct phases.

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.

Chapter 17 – Questions, questions – Exploring Attachment: Home-study visits continued

Frank Gorshin as "The Riddler"

Dib dib dib!

So we’d survived two home-study sessions with Denise and we were all starting to get the measure of each other. And before the next session there was a small matter of seeing whether I could pick up some additional experience of working with children in a formal setting. Sunday League football was out of the question even though there was a local sports field not far off where there were regular kids training sessions every Sunday morning. For us, Sunday mornings were reserved for church and, let’s face it, doing an alternative kids’ activity on Sunday morning simply displaced one childcare opportunity with another. That left me no further forward.


Since we were hoping to be placed, eventually, with a pre-school or kindergarten aged child Beavers seemed to be the obvious door to push on. A quick Google showed that there were three Beaver troops in the area. Excellent, plenty of scope for getting involved in the 8 months or so running up to panel. Or so I thought.

Chapter 16 – Friends: the second home-study visit

Memories...

It was a week or so after our first meeting with Denise, the Earl Grey was brewing nicely in the pot and some Duchy Originals were arranged on a plate saying, “Eat me, eat me...”. We were ready to resume trawling through our pasts for Denise’s benefit.

It’s strange dredging through past memories and mining them for significance. It’s not something which we generally do. We certainly don’t do it in chronological order. One of the exercises which we had done on our Prep Days was to think through the key developmental moments from our personal histories and chart them on a time-line. Alongside each event we had to indicate whether it was an “Up” arrow or a “Down” arrow. Looking back over what I consider to be a broadly happy childhood it was fascinating to see how many arrows were pointing downwards rather than upwards. It seemed that happiness and contentment were a continuum which was punctuated by traumas of different types. I suppose I should be glad that it wasn’t the other way around!

Chapter 15 – Getting to know you: the first home-study visit

Bumps in the road

It was only a week or so later (a completely interminable and dragging week or so later) that we received a letter informing us that “Denise”, our social worker would phone us soon to arrange a mutually convenient date for our first home study visit. We didn’t have long to wait as just the next day the mobile rang while my wife was at work. However, it wasn’t quite the call we were expecting. There was a tetchy voice on the other end of the phone. The tone would have been completely passive aggressive except that there was no passivity about it. “I’ve been looking at your referee list and it’s just completely unacceptable. Didn’t you even read the guidance?”

Yes, of course we had and, indeed, we’d got clarification from Maureen and Doreen at the Prep Days, including asking them to tell us if the mix of people that we’d put down seemed reasonable. We’d even checked whether it was OK to include James and Emma, our closest friends, who had just moved to Brussels. They were on the end of the phone and would be popping back regularly to see family – so that was fine, we were told.

“You’ve got too many family members. You can’t have more than two. You’ll need to drop one of them. And one of these referees lives in Belgium. You can’t expect the council to send people overseas to visit people. What were you thinking? Didn’t you read the guidance? You’ll have to give me alternative referees right now.”

Chapter 14 – Sorry Sir, my dog ate it – The Final Preparation Day

Moving on...

I must confess that the fourth Preparation Day is, ironically, the one of which I have the least vivid memories. Perhaps it was the fact that most of the day was taken up with what seemed like really dry information about the administrative and legal process. There were some more brief discussions around how to apply the PACE principles in practice but most of it was process.

What happened when, who had legal responsibility for what, what steps would be taken by whom to cross which hurdle... I’ve spent a good proportion of my working life in the public sector so I’m no stranger to the importance of bureaucracy. But even for me the content was dry, opaque and distant. Goodness knows how those with a lower red-tape tolerance threshold were coping.

But that was still to come. To celebrate the last of the Prep Days we were early. Stupidly early. All of the regular snarl ups and bottle necks that we left plenty of time to negotiate had been flowing like quicksilver. Jane and John had seemingly had a similarly blessed journey as they were already sitting in the meeting room when we arrived.