How long after being shown a profile?

[CastyNunt]

How long after being shown a profile and saying you wanted to be considered for it did you wait to be told yes / no regarding that child?

I've been waiting around 9 weeks now for an update from my SW after she put us forward for a LO and when I tried to chase this up with her I was just told that these things take time …. this seems like a really long time though, when we've only seen their pen picture and not even their full PAR? Surely at so early in the process their social worker would've replied by now with a "No thanks" or a "Delayed due to X, will let you know by Y." ?

I'm feeling so despaired by the whole process after approval and just want some reassurance that this is normal or not as SW is really not being forthcoming with any explanations or assurances.

If this really is a normal timescale then it feels like we will be waiting years for a match! (And we've got a really wide matching criteria so this seems so odd - although I do appreciate COVID has messed things up).

[Fakinit03]

Not massively experienced but it seems very long to me! We start intros next week and we're shown her profile on the Wednesday evening, we said yes Thursday morning. Met her social worker Friday evening who told us yes there and then!

[Fakinit03]

For the other LO we were put forward for previously we waited 2 weeks to be told no but that was because her sw was on leave for 1 week. We were told normally the child's sw has to choose a family to go forward with within 7 days

[PaintedLadyWBB]

For one LO we waited a total of 52 days to be told no which we found to be an absolute joke. Our LO we waited about a day

[Jellycatspyjamas]

@Fakinit03 your experience is far from normal, it does generally take a bit longer. I’m my experience it tends to be quick when the child is being placed with adopters in the same authority area, there’s only one prospective adopter being considered for the child and the adoption isn’t being contested so the legal stuff is very straightforward (eg the child has already been freed for adoption and the permanence order granted). If any of those variables are different the process takes longer.

For example, if another adopter is being considered it can take time to work out which one would be a better potential match based on the limited information provided, if the child is out of area it introduces another set of workers and procedures into the mix etc etc. Even in a relatively straightforward link I’d say it can take weeks so 52 days is a more normal timescale.

In saying that, 9 weeks is quite a long time to give an answer to “are we being considered or not”, which suggests there may be complicating factors they can’t share with you. That may be as simple as the child’s sw being off work for some reason - it’s not necessarily anything sinister.

This part of the process is really tough, the end is almost in sight, but not quite - hang in there though and do keep chasing up (squeaky wheel and all that).

[CastyNunt]

Thank you so much @jellycatspyjamas for the detailed response, I really appreciate it and having a bit more insight will really help me to remain patient.