between placement and adoption

[MissFenella]

Hi all,

We have not legally adopted yet but will do so in spring next year. Our girls have been here just under a year. They see their SW regularly and that is fine. We also have a social worker and when we have needed her we have accessed support. However, we are now being pressured to commit to regular day time meetings with her and we don't want to. It would involve us taking time off work and we don't have anything we want to say, we are fine. It all seems a bit box ticking rather than supportive
Does anyone know if we are obliged to meet to discuss 'us'?

As I expect you know it is standard for social workers to have regular review meetings until the adoption is finalised. I think social services and the courts would take a dim view of an adoptive parent who refused to co-operate with this.

I'm not sure why your legal adoption order is taking so long, though? And how often do the social workers want to have these review meetings?

it would mean that we would start having a SW visit every two weeks, which seems a bit much to start up some 12 months in.

The order isn't taking a long time, we have our own reasons for not wanting to proceed at this point.

I wouldn't like a visit every two weeks either. Once a month would be the maximum frequency I would want. Not just because of the inconvenience but IME children don't react very well to social workers visiting. I would also be delaying the order a bit in your situation. Neither of my older children were legally adopted in under a year. A year and a half for DD1, just over 2 years for DD2.

I would try and get her to agree to meeting less than every two weeks. Can you manage once every 3 or 4 weeks? Or you could push and try and talk her out of it altogether and just stick to the normal review meeting timetable. Point out that you would struggle to take time off work. I On the other hand, I would try not to rock the boat too much before finalisation. So if the SW was annoyed and pushing it I would probably back down. It's frustrating but I would be trying to keep as many professionals on side as possible, and trying to avoid arguments

thanks Lilka that is sound advice. I think my problem is that I am thinking pfft - why now when we needed someone at the start not now.

Still eyes and teeth until we get where we need to be.

Ah yes, fortnightly seems very OTT. I agree with Lilka - ask very nicely, but don't rock the boat.

You would think they had better ways to spend their time, wouldn't you.

fortnightly?!

I thought 6 weekly was bad enough

Do SS agree with delay in court? If not its probably their way of flexing their parental responsibility muscle to strongarm you into it.

Every 2 weeks seems a lot.

But you are delaying applying for the adoption order.

Without knowing more details (which I accept you might not wish to share here), might this be causing them to think there are problems that you need monitoring / support with?

No problems, or if they think there are they have been a bit slack in doing anything about them.

Its a new boss insisting on this, perhaps they think we have been un supported, which isn't true.

It just seems odd that these meetings are meant to be for our benefit and yet our opinion is worth zip.

Such is life I guess, we will suck it up.