For us we basically were told once we were linked to get completely ready, so we did the nursery for our newly placed LO, got a cot, pram and car seat and started buying some toys. We bought clothes in the age bracket above our LO because we didn’t really know what size he was, but we only did this because we wanted to. We knew that things can go wrong in the inbetween stage you are at, but were told by many people at that stage it’s very unlikely to go wrong.
Though other people have different things, our intros could only start after the agency decision maker had ratified the decision made by panel, and this actually took longer than the 10 working days they allowed. Yours may be different and they may allow intros to start immediately after panel. You may have this time between intros and panel but if you don’t, you probably want to get everything ready!
Your social worker should complete a document (can’t remember what it’s called) similar to the PAR for approval panel, which will be sent to panel. The majority of the work will be completed by the social workers with you only answering a couple of questions.
I cooked lots of meals that could be frozen and reheated - this actually was such a good thing. We are currently a couple of weeks into our LO living with us and we’ve only just managed to finish what was in our freezer. It has made the beginning part of placement so much easier!!
Congratulations on getting to this stage and good luck! Introductions can be incredibly stressful/exciting/emotional so make sure you talk with your support network as much as possible during the introductions when you can. I called my mum pretty much every day!!