Mumsnet Talk

Well after first contacting our la in may of last year we finally start our prep course in the morning am very nervous but excited too. Been over an hour trying to decide what to wear! Starting to feel real now, will come back and feed back on how tomorrow goes.

Any tips on what to expect?

Good luck! I'm sure it will be fine, I hope you find it both interesting and helpful

The content of the prep courses vary between agencies, but I have talked at a prep group recently and I would expect to be able to meet at least one adoptive parent who will speak to you and tell you about their adoption and answer questions you have

I would also expect to be informed what happens in the process, to talk about what kind of children need adoption and maybe explore attachment and trauma a bit. Some people disucss their parenting expectations and moving on from infertility and things like that

There are people here who have been through prep recently so they'll be able to tell you more accurate stuff

Hi Broodymomma Good luck. It will most probably be fun.

I posted about what we did at ours recently on this thread....

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/adoptions/1672690-What-to-expect-on-a-prep-course

I'd also recommend you don't wear anything like a skirt that is a bit too short or tight, as I did for one day, and then spent the time pulling it down and covering my knees with my paper work! I wore jeans the next day!

All the best.

Thanks for the advice folks. Well day one is done and we found it very interesting. Such a varied group of people all very nervous to start but got easier as the day went on.

We covered the reason why children are placed for adoption and all the steps taken to keep them within their birth family in the first instance. I found the attachment issues section really interesting and actually cried when one man talked through his adoption experience it was heartbreaking but a positive outcome for them.

It was very interactive and I did get the feeling we were being assessed the whole way through. I think we done ok.

Glad I went with the jeans/ smart blazer combo!!

Feeling positive tonight and looking forward to getting the next 2 sessions under our belt. Feels a little more real now.

Thanks for listening!

Broody Glad it went well, I am sure you are all in same boat so all want to get to know each other etc. I had one day where had problem with my lderly mum and ended up in the loo on the phone to her doctors and also on phone to work! So it is best to leave all that behind if you can!

Glad to hear it went well. Maybe exchange contact details with other prep group people? They can be a brilliant source of RL support, but our LA wouldn't do it for us ie we had to do our own bit of paper with scribbled email addresses

Did you have to do introductions and tell the group anything about yourself?

We were paired up with someone we didn't know and had to find out a little about them and what they wanted to get from the course and then introduce them to the group. I hate things like that but it was fine.

They also gained our permission to put out a group email so we had everyone's email add should we wish to stay in touch. We were sat with a nice couple who live 15mins from us so already feel we have made some friends on the course.

Will sleep tonight!!

Day 2 tomorrow!

Good luck for day 2, good you are already making friends.

Thanks greyhound. Well another good day completed. We done more exercises today including one where we had 10 things people value most in life and you had to rate them in which order you would give them up and she got faster and faster in making us rate the higher the importance went. Typically everyone ended up with family being the last thing they would loose and they then went into how it's the first thing Children loose and it really made you think. I enjoyed the day a lot, one more to go and then fingers crossed on the road to home study.

Can anyone say roughly what the wait is between course and home study starting?

Glad the prep course is going well. Our la were very quick (April prep course after initial contact in January). Our course was run on three consecutive days. We then waited until July for our home study, which was once a week for seven weeks.

We started home study about a month after prep course.

I think the wait largely depends on your SW's caseload

Well that's day 3 done it was brilliant. I never expected to enjoy it so much. The cherry on the cake was being told all our references were fine so our application has been accepted and we are just waiting now to be allocated our social worker to start the home study. We are off!!!

Yay!! Hopefully you will allocated a SW quickly now

Here's hoping its felt such a long time to just get to this point initial call was in may last year, onwards and upward!l

Congrats on finishing the prep course! Hope you get a nice SW.

Wow well that was quick, just had a call to say they have a link worker for us and hs starts in 2 weeks. At last!!! Mad cleaning frenzy starts now!!

Fabulous news

Ah, the cleaning frenzy. It doesn't matter how many people tell you the SW isn't going to check the top of your kitchen cupboards, you know you'd better clean there anyway just in case...

Best of luck