About to go to panel

[Broodymomma]

20 days and counting. It has taken us since April 2012 to get here but hs had been fine with no issues raised. Our ds has done us so proud on all his interviews and sw just advices to be ourselves and we will be fine. The par is wonderful so why are we so nervous? Just so scared that the future of our family lies with 8-12 people who have never met us before.

What do we wear? What will they ask? How do we stop verbal diahorrea???? Seriously so nervous now! Please tell me it's not as bad as I am imagining!

It's not as bad as you are imagining!

Wear clean, neat but comfortable clothes - not too smart, you are being interviewed to be parents, not city lawyers! Don't get defensive if they grill you - ours did, for ages, but still approved us unanimously.

Your social worker would not be putting you through this if they weren't fully confident you'll be fine. You'll be fine!

But I know you'll be a bag of nerves for 20 days. Just see it as a practice run or matching panel

Oh god can't think that far ahead. Ok so i have a navy leggings and floaty top combo planned. Too casual? Am anticipating a lot of questions re our ds but worried I will just clam up. Do the sw jump in and help?

We went to panel in April and it was nerve wracking. Only in for 10 minutes and they did ask a lot of questions but in our case it was approval for a particular child. It felt as though we were being grilled but it is understandable and looking back it probably wasn't as bad as it felt at the time.
Our sw did help us out during the questioning but it was really like we were all 3 being interviewed and not like she thought we were struggling I would say.

We were asked a lot about how dd 8 felt and how she would cope.
It really isn't as bad as you imagine and I am pretty sure I wore leggings and floaty dress :)
Also found matching panel far easier, maybe as we had met most of them all before.

Good luck.

Just wanted to say Good luck, and be yourselves.
I am sure you are just what they are looking for.

Thanks everyone. Have been so calm until now but we sign the final pat in the morning and it has become so real now

Final par even, god I'm useless - good morning panel have you read our pat lol!

Have you spoken to your SW about panel? Ours seems to have been different from others' experiences.

When we arrived, they gave us a list of 3 questions that they were going to ask us, and then left us for 20 minutes or so to prepare answers. The questions weren't particularly hard, but were clearly personal to us and our circumstances and our PAR. Whilst we were preparing to answer these our SW was being grilled about other stuff.

I know what you mean about your 'entire future being in the hands of a 8-12 people'. I had a bit of a tantrum about it on the drive to panel, but pulled myself together in time to go in and be unanimously approved. ;)

(And they do know you -- they know what the PAR says. And it's wonderful.)

Firstly good luck :)

I panicked over what to wear and changed several times. In the end I wore jeans, smart jumper and sparkly flats.

Everyone was lovely. I felt (genuinely) that there were willing us to do well

We were asked a medical question about DH, why we wanted to adopt, why we had asked for a girl, and about our dog. And that was it...

We then went to a waiting room, whilst our SW stayed in there. The chair then came out and told us we had been approved. I cried, DH wobbled, and I flung my arms round the chair

Then we celebrated... Then we waited and waited...

It will be absolutely fine :)