Moving on

[ShootingStarsinthesky]

I recently started a thread after a break down in bridging and had some very kind and supportive replies.

Having calmed down a lot! I can say that we made the right decision to stop the bridging before placement although we bitterly regret not telling the Social Workers of our increasing doubts through the frenetic days of bridging.

We can now see that we just did not have enough time alone with the child as another sibling was present a lot of it which resulted in fighting and constant uproar and the behavioural problems we witnessed were worse than I imagined, although we were told of behavioural problems beforehand. The foster parents seemed barely able to contain them and admitted that after 14 months had not been able to do much with them she also said the siblings had been the worse they had seen in 26 years. We did not tell our Social Workers of growing doubts because we were unsure and thought they might stop bridging altogether and we would lose our chance of what could be a case of us getting used to the child. This was such a mistake.

Having discussed the bridging with our Social Worker I can see that we were in the wrong there and she said it was very upsetting and confusing for the child and did we realise how upset the child was as a result of our actions. I asked if we would ever be considered for another match but she said she did not know. We are waiting to have a meeting with the Adoption Manager.

How are you doing, Shooting?

Has the pain lessened a little bit?

I missed this thread when first posted, but I am so on your behalf that so much has been handled badly.

You should have had professional support. If they were so poor in intros, just think how ineffectual they would be at post-adoption support. For this reason, personally I would be asking them for assurances that they were fully committed to providing proper support to adopters, as your experience suggests they are lacking.

And those poor children - how can one sibling possibly be expected to be there while the other gets ready to their "forever family"? And no child should end up with four adults shouting at them - especially a vulnerable one. I'd be seriously questioning the FC's approach on that one.

Hi everyone I thought I would bring you up to date. My dh and I have been given a second chance to go through with matching another child. We are having a break at the moment but will have a new Social Worker in September and start bridging in October.

It was decided that our child was not prepared sufficiently by the Foster Carers for the move to adoption and that we should try again. Great news for us and we cannot wait.

Sorry I should have added I am taking a Parenting Course, working voluntarily in a nursery and reading all I can on adoption to show commitment and prepared as much as possible. DH is taking the course as well.

Oh, what fabulous news. I am so pleased for you.

Shooting great news. Good luck.

I would also say we learnt that when you bridge with a child outside your are consortium your SW will only know what the child's SW informs them and paperwork for that child. They do not know the children as well as if they are from their own consortium. We have asked that we try again with a child in the local consortium for this reaon.

I am so pleased for you. You are doing all the right things, too. Next time everyone will be more prepared and it will be amazing!

So pleased you are able to continue.

Thank you for your support. I feel we may be more prepared the next time and also the intro breakdown has made me realise even more how much we want to bring a child into our lives.

Oh, I'm so pleased to hear that.

First off, congratulations. Now...

It is interesting what you said about your social worker not knowing the child. Our social worker had no additional information about our child and he was within our local authority. All she saw was what was contained in the cpr. I don't think she even read any of the health reports, LAC reviews although I'm sure they were available if she wanted to. The first time she met our child was a week into placement during her first home visit. This is the norm for our local authority.

I'm not sure what things are like in your authority / consortium. Maybe it is different? I'm not trying to bring you down; I'm very pleased that you are moving forward with your life and the process. I just want you to be crystal clear with your expectations (and the expectations of other readers of this thread). Good luck.

I'd second what odyssey says. Really glad that you're giving it another go (and that they are letting you) - it sounded from what you wrote, that those intros/bridging, was really badly handled.
Incidentally, it could be said that this demonstrates quite some resilience on your part ;)

But yeah, in my limited experience too, the child's SW and the adopters' SW don't necessarily talk much. The adopters' SW won't 'know' the child personally; at most, if they have a well functioning team, the child will have been briefly discussed in team meetings. But quite possibly, the adopters' SW knows exactly what's written in the CPR and medical report (or less, depending on how well they read these docs). As soon as you as adopter have in addition to reading the documents, perhaps chatted to the child's current carers, YOU will know more about the child than your SW - no matter if the child is from your same LA or not.

The person who is really supposed to know more about the child, is the child's SW (in reality though, it is often the FC who knows the child best). So it all depends on the child's SW and FCs. On how well they communicate, and how much they have actually got to know the child. Some SWs have such heavy caseloads that they never really get a chance to properly understand each child's particular needs and issues. Again, the child being in 'your' LA care, doesn't necessarily change any of this!

That said, you and your SW both, now know better what to expect and what kind of things you need to insist on, and I'd expect that any child's SW before agreeing to a match with you, will look at why the last one went wrong, and learn from that too.

I hope you're holding up ok. Pulling out of a placement at the end of bridging must have been incredibly hard, with huge emotional turmoil. It's hard enough saying 'no' to a child who you know only on paper, through a CPR - even though it may be the right thing to do - I can't imagine how hard it must be to make the decisions you have had to.

Thank you everyone for your kind words. You support has been invaluable throughout.

I was very interested to read both odyssey2001 and 64x32x24 and your experiences with your S Workers. It was our Adoption Manager who said that they know the children very well when they have come from their area, though I guess on reflection that could be interpreted as their authority only and not the consortium as I presumed.

She explained how she thought second time around we need to ask the FC a lot of questions, now just the obvious ones but try to really find out as much as we can about the child.

I think in our case the child's SW was changing jobs and there was such a large number of children ready to be placed for adoption that she perhaps did not have the time to spend with us during the intros.

I still think about this child everyday and hope she is ok. It is an awful thing to go through and I only hope at 2 turning 3 she has forgotten most of it.

Hello OP. I think you were really brave in not going ahead. It's very hard to put the breaks on when the wheels are in motion, and I'm really glad you are going to have another opportunity. I'm not an adopter, but have been a foster carer for many years and have been through the matching process for long term placements on several occasions. We have had several experiences where the child has been completely, radically, different to the reports that we have received from previous foster carers, placing officer and the child's social worker. Sometimes the process has gone on for months and months and we have provided volumes of supporting evidence on our side, yet the information coming back has been incredibly inaccurate. The only information that we have found consistently true and accurate have been from the children's schools and previous schools. They have always got an accurate picture of the child, in our experience and don't have the rose tinted views that some social workers, who have worked with the chuld's family sometimes for many years can have.

Hi Eelseelseels, Wow it is amazing to hear that misrepresentation does occur quite often and it sounds as though you have a very difficult task in producing supporting evidence in order to address these inconsistencies. You are so good to keep trying to put things right.

I will bear in mind that schools are good at giving a more accurate picture of the child. We did in fact visit the nursery of the child before the Matching Panel and they said her behaviour had improved over the year she had attended and they had no concerns but then I guess young children can be better behaved in a play environment, it could have been different I guess in a school environment. Indeed her siblings were having problems with school.