adoption timelines

[prumarth]

So, as I mentioned on a previous thread, I am planning on leaving work and being a sahm once my adoption maternity break from work ends. As a result, we are now frantically trying to assess budgets and plans. For example do we invest big spend now in our house or squirrel away the cash for when we drop one salary. However I'm struggling to find out how long the process is in general between panel approval and matching with a child (and our sw has been very vague) so it's hard to know what decisions to make between saving and spending. I am hoping we will go to panel sometime around April (I hope, I hope, I hope!). Any idea on roughly how long then the matching process might then take?? I read in a telegraph article that the average weight is 4 years!! Surely that's a scare story!!! If it's 4 years I may as well invest in a kitchen extension after all!

I have no idea what the answer to your actual question is other than that the Telegraph sounds like it's talking out of its capacious arse.

BUT I had a good job and am now a SAHM and if I had my time again I would have saved more and not bought that bloody chair from Heals We're OK now but it was a pain having to think about every penny when I was first out and about with DD and couldn't just say 'Oh we'll have lunch here at the softplay place' or 'I'm knackered, let's get a takeaway'. So that's an answer to a question that you didn't ask

Plus your Dcs will not love or respect your beautiful furnishings and white white walls and units and you will have to scrape stickers and crayon off them every bloody night.

Thanks ladies - I'm glad the telegraph isn't an accurate reflection! At that rate, I wish I would have started trying for a family as soon as I left school! My practical husband is definitely veering towards saving while we still can - I'm slipping into full romantic family mode and imagining us all laughing around a big kitchen table while we eat brunch together hence the new kitchen idea. Hmm, as my husband suggests, we will likely be picking bits of food out of our hair for a few years rather than eating pancakes around the table if our nieces and nephews are anything to go by! Right, I will close down the "new kitchen" tab and start looking at saving rates instead!

Save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, I am not yet an adopter so feel free to ignore me!

I asked about this a while ago but can't find the thread! The answer ranged from a short while to about 2 years. The most common answers seemed to be 4-6 months.

our s.wrker has said that she has never known anyone who has been with our la be waiting for more than 12 months but most are even less. telegraph sounds like cack.

Thanks so much, that sounds excitingly close! Would love 2014 to be our year! In that case, I'm definitely needing to save or we may end up burning the current kitchen table for fuel next winter!
Italian, I'm not sure your opinion - can you spell it out a bit for me :)

Honestly I look at that bloody chair and the curtains on their specially bent curtain pole hanging behind the damn thing...

Do we get a chance to sit in a bedroom chair? Do we heck as like.

That Telegraph article is talking a load of crap. Ignore it. Waiting 4 years would be extremely rare, and I mean extremely rare. I know a very few people may have to wait that long, but most people (IME) will have their children moving in in under 18 months, only a few will have to wait any more than that. I do know a few people who were matched within a the first two months post approval which is very fast. It does depend a lot on your area, which children are available and what children you feel you can adopt

What Italian said!! SAVE !!!! You will be very glad of it when you have children and suddenly need emergency funds for this, that and the other!

I'm sure some people wait 4 years. But I've never known one. We waited 10 months between approval and lo moving in, and that didn't seem considered a short wait by anybody. I have friends who were approved and matched pretty much simultaneously, as a child was identified during home study. That's not hugely likely to happen to you, but it might, so make sure you factor that possibility into your planning.

Bet that chair is great for dumping clothes on of an evening though, namechange (if your house is anything like ours)! That's really helpful all, I guess we need to be working on end of 2014 as a target which gives us time to sort out new child's bedroom and save as well. My brother is saving up stuff that his daughter is getting too big for in case we find use for it - I hope the sw don't mind second hand where appropriate?? Of course will completely depend on who we get, age etc.

For us Panel was March 2012 our LO came home July 2013.
Very painful. There are so many factors affecting the wait, for example little girls are very popular. How many children do your LA have waiting?
Also for us, the process before panel was delayed by 6 months because we told the LA we were doing building work and they said they had to holt the process until we had finished the work......

You will be waiting 4 years if you have specified a girl. With red hair. And dimples. Called Anne.

Otherwise probably what everyone else has said.

and I've just realised that I've kinda described unwittingly Anne of Green Gables!

Are you sure you want to specify Anne? All that slate cracking and temper

DD1 and I both love Anne, I used to read it to her and she picked new middle names based on the book when she was legally adopted

Second hand clothes are fine, as long as they fit and are appropriate there's not a problem. I have to say, when my kids moved in, I found myself really keen to buy them clothes and see them in clothes that I'd bought for them. I guess because mentally that made them feel more integrated into the family, a kind of claiming process? I didn't actually buy them lots of new clothes, they wore a lot of clothes their FC's sent with them for familiarity, but I remember feeling so satisfied when buying them new clothes and seeing them dressed in them

Its a bit like marking your territory isn't it!

But mostly DS was dressed in the most incredibly lovely barely used clothes from friends and MN'ers and my mother took to ferreting out bargains from local charity shops like a demon! It was quite sweet actually. We decided that there was a local rich kid who was 6 months older than DS as one charity shop seemed to get in beautiful Gap and other clothes in DS's size in batches every 6 months.

SW never asked about how I was planning to dress him.

Other way round for me, Maryz - sacks of clothes, presents and cards when dd1 was born (birth child), almost nothing when dd2 came home. I think maybe 2 cards. Though I didn't need or want the circus of the first time round, I felt sad that dd2's arrival went almost unremarked by my entire extended family and friendship network

Anyway, I was ITCHING to buy clothes for dd2 and get her out of the pink appliqued naff stuff she was wearing when she came [snob alert]. But that felt disrespectful and I was mindul of not taking her out of familiar togs - even though she was only a baby - so I had to wait.

Yes, that may be it Maryz. And of course if they had made a fuss it would have been overwhelming. But still... I have aunts, uncles and cousins who have never actually acknowledged her existence, three years on.

Miserable buggers; who needs 'em...

I'm already finding myself looking at kids outfits in shops (nice change to rushing through without letting myself dwell!), but I definitely won't turn down any freebies to help out while we get going. Although I'm vastly ahead of myself at the moment!