Hi there, I'm nearing the end of assessment process and am in Scotland. I'm trying to log in on computer to reply but it won't let me, so using my phone. Excuse any bad punctuation, phone can be tricky for long messages.
Anyway, here's an Idea of our timings/dates:
October 2013- made initial call to our LA. They send out an information pack with a form we had to send back to them saying whether we were still interested or not. (We were obviously)
November 2013- initial visit from a resource worker, she came out just to have an informal chat really. Find out a bit about us etc. She then said yes, I feel adoption sounds a good route for you, I will put you forward for prep groups and to be allocated social worker. She advised us that they were short staffed, one sw had suddenly died and one had gone off long term sick (she didn't tell us that tho, someone who had just adopted did) Anyway, she said it could be a few months before we heard, which we didn't mind as Xmas was near and I was busy with exams.
January 2014- we started prep group mid jan, this lasted 3 weeks.
End of January we met our allocated sw, and she gave us the formal application form, and said as of the day she receives that back completed, her time frame is to get us to approval panel within 6 months of that date.
February 2014- we had our medicals done, and also our pvgs etc. Sw started our assessment with weeky/fortnightly visits
March 2014- ongoing visits and sw met with out referees
April and May- still ongoing. Although we don't see sw much now as she is pretty much finished our assessment and is just writing up our form f. She had planned to apply for an earlier panel date as she says were good to go now, but as my husband works offshore, we have decided to leave it as our original date in July.
So from our initial telephone call, to our approval panel date, the process will be 9 months.
Hope this helps? Different parts of Scotland might be different