Can anyone tell me there experience of going to panel to be approved.

[april74]

DH and I have been going through the adoption process and aee currently 3/4 weeks away from going to panel, I have heard some horrid stories about panel and them grilling you, just wandered if anyone else can share there experience.

Hi April74 sorry i have no experience of going to panel when me and my husband were being approved the social workers went representing you and putting your case before the panel then thay came back with the decicision and any ;issues that the panel may have ;to gain more clarification i dont know which way will prove to be the best it was frustrating not being able to connect with them our life direction was totaly in our social workers hands and luckily for us she was brilliant we got through but still had a extra meeting after to tie up the questions that the panel had delibarated over .
are you going to be approved for one child/baby do you know yet
i dont know if this will help but good luck i would love to talk to you more and try to offer support.

Thanks both :)

The social worker has said its best if we go, we just have our final sessions to complete, she has contacted dh's ex-wife but she is not replying which is a pain, the relationship ended because she was having an affair, she has no reason to put a spanner in the works, dh didn't want her back and he moved on, she did not for a while, she has own family now.

We already have a ds aged 6, so we are asking for 0-4 yrs, although we are hoping for around the 1-2 yr age range.

Can not believe the rollercoaster of emotions that the process has had on our, we have had highs and lows, but looking forward to hopefully being approved and adding to our family. We know its going to be very hard work, but can't wait to start.

I went to my panel last May. I was more terrified than I've ever been in my life, gave pretty stupid answers to some of the questions and I still passed! And I did it on my own with no-one to hold my hand.

They weren't horrid at all, I thought they asked some pretty stupid questions with very obvious answers but looking back on it, I'd definitely choose to go. It's their chance to eyeball you and realise that you're just regular normal people (assuming you are!), my SW said panels had fewer issues when parents appeared than when they didn't as most of their concerns were reassured by just seeing normal people in front of them.

Does that help?

If you have any questions ask away. I wish I'd been able to talk to someone else before I'd gone to panel and realised that the decision is 99% made based on the home study.

JayzMummy - I worship at your feet is you are even a tiny bit responsible for getting us access to panels. However scared I was it would have felt very wrong not beiong able to attend. In my case the panel spent longer asking me questions than the SW but I understand thats fairly common with Richmond council.

Hi SueJonez: Our last panel was also with Richmond (we subsequently moved to Guildford).

Hi april74, encountering so many earnest people gathered around the table all desperately endeavouring to be friendly and approachable was almost as humorous as it was intimidating. The questions they asked had all been covered in the homestudy and I think they were searching around for things to say to take up the allotted time. I too got the impression that their minds were largely made up before they met us, based on the Homestudy. However, this was for our second adopted child, so turning us down would have been unusual.

Issyfit - Richmond are known to be a difficult panel, did you find that? One panellist asked me if I would consider an Asian child to be second best to a caucasian one (I might get a child of either ethnicity) and this was asked by an Asian member of the panel! It wasn't difficult to "guess" the correct answer!

Mind you, the first question they asked was what changes I'd have to make to my life to accomodate a child and I babbled on about needing a babysitter when I went out. A little voice in my head was saying "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP" - no doubt they thought I spend most of my nights out clubbing and was planning the babysitter rota already. God nothing could be further from the truth!

As I said - they still approved me!

From my (very limited) experience I would agree that most of the time they just want to cast an eye over you. My DSis was adopted as a 6 week old baby and when my parent went before the panel my father had a complete blank when he was asked how many other children they had (three), their ages and dates of birth. He could only answer the first part with some difficulty! My mother thought they had blown it completely. It wasn't at all that he was an absentee father - he had prepared himself for searching questions and got wrong footed by the most straightforward one imaginable. They were told afterwards that it was quite common for that to happen and that the home study was more telling (the SW turned up unannounced once during my birthday party when Dad was leading all the games and that is the impression they took of him, not that he couldn't remember how many children he had!)

Sorry, this was years and years ago, but it seems to back up what other people are saying.

pmsl at your dad not being able to remember how many children he had! I did wonder whether the first question was a "freebie" as I'm sure most people speak gibberish when they panic.

My friend froze when they asked her and her Dh to introduce themselves. All she could say in a very small squeaky voice was "hello my names Alison" and couldn't think of anything else!

the stories are definately helping, when I am nervous I tend to talk total and utter gibberish, but lukcily dh is much less nervous about things like that, he goes to court all the time and stuff.

also will add that he goes to court for his job, not for any criminal convictions lol

Should we be asking why your husband goes to court all the time?

lol I realised that as soon as I read it.

Don't worry april74, we won't tell your sw, our lips are sealed...

Whens your panel date and which council are you in? Do you know any other adopters in the area you can chat with - ask your SW to put you in touch with a couple, it can be helpful.

We also went through before it was poss to attend the panel - but also tried to get this changed. The advantage of attending is that if there are any quite minor queries/outstanding issues that can be dealt with on the day they will be rather than being referred back to sw to sort out. Although we had every confidence in our sw being able to represent us we felt that it would have been preferable to have been there ourselves. It's very understandable to feel nervous with so much depending on it but I honestly feel the decision is 95% made from what they know from the sw. Good Luck it's an exciting stage, we hope it all works out for you

Its not actually come throught yet as we have another 2 sessions for our homestudy, the sw thinks it before the end of June. Its southampton council.

Hiya April74,
first of all best of luck with Panel. I think that you should find it all to be relatively painless. We attended Panel last Novemeber and I think that we were only in there about fifteen minutes, most of that being taken up by introductions, our SW had gone in first and she was probably in there a similar length of time or even a little less.
If your SW has done their job right then you've no worries. They asked us why we wanted to adopt and why now (we already have two birth children), what our children's opinions were to it all and how we thought they would cope if they ever felt threatened by the attention that would be required by any placed child during settling in, and how we would handle a scenario such as placed child damaging a possession of one of our birth children. We were approved.
Good luck, and I'm sure you'll do great.

My bro has adopted two gorgeous kids, the process has been agonising for him and my SIL (and to some extent even for us, too!) but I don't think they found the panels particularly gruelling.

All I can say to you is: thank you. My dniece and particularly dnephew were very sad little pips when they first came to live with my bro and SIL, and literally within weeks they were transformed into happy, lively, naughty, exhausting, lovely little people. To be able to make such a huge difference to a child: that's incredible. Well done you!

I had to go to Panel and it kept getting deferred. Was not allowed to go into Panel at that time and had to rely on useless SW to put my case forward. Would not recommend it - was awful. Eventually had children plced with me only for their birth mother to make application to have them back, which Court granted. Never ever ever again. Awful

Would also say that many years later I gave birth naturally to healthy ds.

Fortunately the adoption law has changed recently so the experience mandyj had, having the children reclaimed by their birth mother should not happen any more.

Glad to hear things have changed now. It was very distressing not only for us but for the children who did not want to go.

Good luck with the Panel.

mandy and

good luck all!