Home visit in 2.5hrs

[fledtoscotland]

I'm so nervous/excited. DH is finishing work early. SW wanted to come at 4 to meet BC.

Nice biscuits - tick
Clean logo-free mugs - tick
De-dog haired the house - tick
Zoflora'd every possible surface - tick
Sat in a corner rocking with nerves - tick

Playing devil's advocate here, but what if you adopt a dc who initially appeared to be fine with your dogs but for whatever reason it doesn't work out and the child's behaviour makes it impossible to keep them together?

Obviously you would put your dc's needs above your dogs' needs in terms of rehoming your dogs, but this is a real decision that has happened to some adopters and that the SW will want you to have considered. If you appear inflexible in considering this as a possible scenario, the SW will be concerned and you will be harder to match because there just aren't any guarantees as to how anything will pan out with any child.

I don't think anyone would suggest re-homing an animal purely to look hypothetically more attractive to SW's with children to place.

However, as many people have indicated, it is quite possible that children placed may have specific history related to animals, or may be aggressive with animals as a result of earlier life experiences. An assessing SW will talk to you about how you would handle that if it happened, and would expect you to be prepared to re-home the animal if things were going badly after a child was placed with you, and if other options were not successful.

We did rehome a dog a few years back who got agitated when ds1 was born so obviously I would put a child before an animal however I will not rehome an animal to give me a better chance, in the eyes of SW, of getting a child. Any potential AC would have to be introduced to the dogs as they will BC.

Re competition - that's exactly the word she used. "You will be competing against other people". I was . DH is annoyed and disappointed too. He doesn't feel she actually made an effort to listen to us and just spoke without knowledge.

Anyway I'm going to bed. I'm so disappointed the focus was on the negative rather than what we can offer. We have a loving secure family unit (inc DC & dogs) but that wasn't that consideration today. The SW also assumed Ds1 was autistic as he's attended a speech & language programme. He is not autistic but had a speech delay. Her assumption annoyed me too. She asked for the boys to leave the room when she arrived without speaking to them.

In general it wasn't a success. I'm going to think about it over the weekend before contacting another agency and possibly her line manager.

fledtoscotland I am so sorry that your experiences today were not good.

This really is not always the case. I do think some social workers do feel it is almost there role to be the gatekeeper and keep people 'out; who are not 'keen' enough.

You have previously re-homed a dog because of your ds, this is exactly what social worker will want to know, they will be very encouraged (I would hope) by this.

I am sorry your dh as discouraged but I do feel that another agency or even a different social worker from the same agency may actually paint a different picture.

Would this person be your social worker? For us we had one person do the original interview, then one lady took us to panel (approval) another started and then went off sick and then we ended up with a lovely woman who has finally led us through matching.

If this a voluntary agency they do not have any children to place, would a local council or authority be better (or is it all different in Scotland?).

I am [shocked] and the social worker did not speak to your child and assumed things about them! Not at all professional.

One social worker came into the room where dd was watching telly and when dd was not very excited to see her she asked me if dd opposed the adoption! No, she just opposes anything that gets in the way of her post-school telly-fest!

It is a shame the social worker homed in on competition. In my mind this is the wrong way to phrase it. BUT to be realistic there are a certain number of children and a certain number of adopters. There is no automatic allocation of child to adopter (as I believe there are in some overseas countries or there once was here with babies - you are top of list - you are next).

In that sense it is competition in that some adopters will be in more demand and some children will be in more demand possibly!

So for example if you would like to adopt a small baby with reltively few issues you may find lots of other adopters want to adopt such a child so you would be 'in completion' with those other people. It is not a good or bad thing (IMHO) it is just a fact. However, if you are more open on age and willing to accept some issues etc you will almost certainly find lots of children because very sadly there are lots of children 'in the system' at the moment.

This is all my opinion, based on my experiences in England.

Likewise I am led to believe there are not many adopters who are any ethnicity or heritage other than white British but many children in the system are mixed heritage. Therefore if you are (or anyone is) in a mixed heritage couple they will be more 'in demand'.

We considered a mixed heritage little girl and knew we would not be the first choice as we are white British. We were willing to be considered 'in competition' with other adopters because we felt she was right for us. However, when we heard about the little boy who is now our son we both knew he was right and we withdrew from the little girl (she, of course, never knew). For our son there was another couple on the horizon so again we were in competition, again he did not know. We were matched because we (for different experiential reasons) could meet his needs better.

I hope the social worker and family finder made the right decision.

I think it helps to think of it as who (single/couple or family) is best for the child and in order to ascertain that the social workers/family finders must look at different people.

We were led to believe having a birth child would go against us but in relativity we were matched before others who did not have birth children. Maybe because we were open on gender and age and ethnicity etc and maybe just because we really were right for our son. Let's hope so!

Sorry this is so long.

I really hope you will not be discouraged, you sound lovely and sensible and the social worker sounds like an idiot!

All he best.

Sorry that should read ....However, when we heard about the little boy who is now our son we both knew he was right and we withdrew from attempting to be matched with the little girl (she, of course, never knew). For our son there was another couple on the horizon so again we were in competition, again he did not know. We were matched because the social worker felt we (for different experiential reasons) could meet his needs better.

not relativity - reality!

fled please don't be disheartened. You sounded a bit surprised that you were told you might be in competition for some children. It depends what child you are looking for. If you are hoping eg for a child 3 or under with no significant issues, then I think you have to be realistic that in some cases you may have to wait and may be in competition with other adopters who have no birth children (or just one) and no animals.

Every BC will be considered a risk to the adoption not working - which is the worst thing that can happen. I think SWs (at matching) consider it like this. 2 parents = 2x risk of adoption not working (I guess because both parents have to gel with child), 2 parents plus 1 child (adopted or birth) = 3x risk of adoption not working. 2 parents plus 2 existing children in family = 4x risk of adoption not working. It's not quite as simple as I have set out but it is something like that.

And you also have 3 dogs (and an Alsatian is not a small dog). Of course, they are part of your family but I would be cautious going through with an assessment where you didn't at least trot out the line that, if necessary, you would re-house a dog or all 3! That is what SS will want to hear - that you are flexible and you understand.

My son would not have been suitable for your household (and there are no identifiable issues with him, he is bright, was just over 2 when we were first linked to him) because he is terrified of dogs. So even if you had shown an interest (not saying you would have!) I strongly doubt his SW would have considered a match with your family because why make an already traumatised little boy who is going to have to go through the added trauma of being moved from a foster home, be subjected to additional stress for possibly months at his new home as he "gets used" to your 3 dogs....

However, as I said above, some adoptive children will want to have dogs in their new family or already be used to dogs (because FCs have them).

I would strongly suggest that you agree to some level of flexibility wth regard to your dogs. Assessment is all about showing how you will put adopted child's needs above everyone else's (and that will include BC for a while as AC settle in).

Hels is right and I'm sorry you were disheartened too. Someone once told me that actually adoption was a self selecting process and that if you managed to put up with everything that was thrown at you then you pretty much get to the end (barring any significant reasons why not) and in a way I think that is probably true. You do have to be pretty resilient and determined and you very quickly learn that it is not a process you can control. You can't make social workers behave the way you think they ought, you can only control how you respond to them.

What you see as negative the social worker probably sees as pragmatic having talked to hundreds of prospective adopters and come across many who really haven't considered what issues adopted children might come with and haven't considered that their animals might put off some social workers - either totally rationally based on the child's needs or irrationally based on their own perceptions. And to be fair probably every person that social worker sees thinks they can provide a loving stable family - you see it said all teh time on MN when people discuss TV programmes about adoption "Oh I'd love to adopt, I have a spare room and lots of love" - and they probably get a spike of people enquiring after the run of TV programmes we've had this year. My initial assessment was very matter of fact, fact finding and telling it like it is kind of meeting, it was the SW really deciding whether I could go above and beyond the nice home and nice person that most people who want to adopt have/are.

Some adopters are even convinced that social workers always go in heavy to weed out those who don't have the fortitude to deal with the issues ahead - though I'm personally not convinced that's true. I think that sw's just see a lot of unrealistic people a lot of whom drop out.

I personally would strongly advise against making any kind of complaint or even raising her negative attitude as an issue (if thats what you talking to the manager is alluding to). I have never yet met a successful adopter who thinks that complaining about a social worker was helpful in their quest to adopt. Unless you are on a mission to improve the adoption process for others and are not 100% determined to get to an adoption of your own, then complaining about a social worker (officially or unofficially) rarely smoothes the path.

My advice is to bite your lip, mile nicely and tell the truth "we have rehomed a dog in the past when it became a problem for our DS" and don't make a big issue of how you feel its not fair that social workers might bring their own prejudices into play.

If you didn't feel comfortable with this agency's approach then try another.

Sorry that was a bit of an essay

You need to see the Approval process a long interview for the position of being a parent.

You have to be positive and articulate and show why you're right for the job and why it would be a good move for them to recruit you. They have to question, listen and assess and try and come to the right decision. Many in the process will also be positive and encouraging but not all as its not actually a requirements looking at it from their side of the fence!

Kew - I totally agree with everything you and the others have said. I feel that she didn't give us a chance to explain ourselves and viewed the dogs without allowing us to voice that we won't get rid of them to get a child but should there be problems, the child comes first. Am going to talk to another agency on Monday to see about timeframe as 3 months til prep is ridiculous. Our other agency local to us does it differently so maybe it will suit us better.

Fwiw - I work in child protection so understand fully the journey an AC will have had before they reach the point of moving in with a family.

We had a three month wait until our first prep. Honestly that is no time at all. They squeezed us in that one, otherwise it would have been 6 months. (This is in the old system however). I would certainly have a look at other agencies, but the one thing I learnt about the adoption process is there is an awful lot of waiting, so be prepared.

At our group, we were told they prioritised by couples without children, single parents and then families with children. And that was for allocating social workers right through to matching, as I understand.

We had two month wait till prep as our la do them quarterly so we just got booked on to the next ones coming up. Maybe the same case with yours and you had just missed the latest groups?

Re dogs, we have three, two of which are quite big. Maybe people are right about it depending on the social worker, ours isn't a dog person but was won over by ours, and their part on our form f has been written in such a positive light it actually brought tears to my eyes. Nothing was said about them hindering the process, but we did mention that just like if we'd had bc, the kid/s would come first.

I waited 6 months prep course but again this was in the olden days!

Hm, is it odd that this kind of thing wasn't covered before you got to home visit? We had a very exploratory conversation on the phone with a lovely agency which covered all the basics of our circumstances - living arrangements, jobs, family, etc - which sorted out a lot of stuff about initial suitability.

They also gently raised the idea of competition at that point - when they asked about our experience with children, they thought it was a real plus that we had volunteered with older kids, but suggested getting some experience volunteering with younger children if that was the age group we were looking for as 'the child's social worker will be looking for the best match for them, and you need to think about how you'll come across in comparison with other people', which seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

It just seems a bit weird that they took you as far as home visit without having got those basics out of the way?

And on the dogs, I was absolutely terrified of dogs when I was a child (and was up until a few years ago). If, say, I'd been a looked after child, it would have been a complete no no and in fact very traumatising to be placed where there were dogs. So it won't work for everyone...

I also agree that 3 months isn't an unusually long time to wait for a prep group, we had our home visit in November 2011 and were put on a "reserve" list for the next prep group in March 2012. This meant that if anyone dropped out we could go on it. Nobody dropped out so we had to wait until June, 7 months later

Our LA now sends prospective adopters to prep groups run by other members of their consortium (and accepts theirs onto their own prep groups). Which means that together, they have a prep group every 5 or 6 weeks. It wouldn't make sense for any one LA (unless it were huge and very busy) to run prep groups that frequently! So joining up with their consortium partners only makes sense, and is probably pretty much the only way they can achieve those '2 months for stage 1' goals.

There are some downsides to going to prep group outside your own LA however. Firstly, the other prep group participants may well be from widely dispersed locations, so it is difficult to keep any kind of regular contact going afterwards; same with the 'already-adopters' who come to prep group as guest speakers. Second, for us it meant we never saw or spoke to anyone from our own LA for the whole duration of stage 1, which was rather weird and quite nerve-racking. Third, you don't get to know the site where your panel meeting will be held (ok this is minor but it did make me more nervous for panel, never having been there before!). Fourth, whatever internal informal communications that may happen between the SWs who run prep course (and might mentally ear-mark you for a certain child already) and your (to be) assessing SW, won't happen. And fifth, we found ourselves having quite a few of our questions responded to with 'Well in this LA we would do it like this, but we have no idea how your LA does it.'

Having to wait 3 months for prep group is understandable from that perspective. If they wanted to, they could start you on stage 1 nevertheless... get all the paperwork rolling, so that prep group finalises stage 1 and allows you to move straight on to stage 2!

That said, we had prep group about 3 weeks after 'registration of interest'. However from first speaking to our LA, to get to ROI, took quite a while! You might find that if you go with a different agency, you may wait even longer in total. After calling them, they'll have to find time to come see you, then write up a report, and only then could you ROI and go on the next prep course. We were meant to be on an September prep course but because they suddenly decided that what they had been counting as initial meeting, didn't actually qualify as initial meeting, we had to schedule a new meeting, wait for the report, and ended up going to the December prep group.

Hi fledtoscotland
I have a dog and on every single meeting with kids SWs they asked what I would do if a child was placed with me and subsequently couldn't get on with my dog. What would you do, if, despite all your best efforts the child simply couldn't cope with your dogs, the intros go fine the initial meetings with dogs/child go great the child tries really hard to love your dogs, but then 3 months into placement they simply can't cope. Would you disrupt the match or would you rehome your dogs? If that was the only choice how would you choose. You need to be able to answer this question. Every panel you go to will ask, and they want a very specific answer.

Sorry I only read page one then posted this, most of what I've said seems to have already been covered.

Thankyou for everyone's input. We are waiting for another agency to phone back. After long chats DH & I agree we don't like the attitude of the SW who came out. We have spoken to my best pal who has agreed that should there be problems she would happily take all 3 dogs (she works from home).

Our decision to change agency is based on her description of "competition". If she truly believes this we don't want her to do our assessment as we think the right child should be placed with us not us having to effectively go into a bidding war with other adopters.

I will pass my comments onto her line manager as I believe it's a training issue and she needs to give us a chance to speak about our plans if the dogs are a problem rather than generalise about it being a negative against us. Re her huge assumption about DS1 - she has a massive gap in her knowledge if she think all children with disordered speech development are autistic.

Anyway, will speak to the other agency but I've learned a lot - primarily that I do not want to adopt from the agency who came out on Thursday.

Fledtoscotland you said ...we think the right child should be placed with us not us having to effectively go into a bidding war with other adopters.

Is this your interpretation of what competition means?

I am assuming the social worker did not mention a bidding war.

You are quite at liberty to speak to the social workers superior. I do agree that assuming things about your birth children in that way is annoying but I think you will not get very far with your complaint if it is primarily about the perception of competition.

How do you think the social workers will know you are the right family for a child?

I am pretty sure they will read your details and the details of others and they will decide based on what they read. If they have met you in person or spoken to you by phone this could help your case. It must be very, very hard to know who will be best for a given child or sibling group.

How do you think they are going to access this without any competition? (This is a genuine question ).

I am just worried you are going to get very frazzled by you interactions with social workers if you feel the need to complain about this.

This agency may well not be the one for you. You may be very wise to try another or look into a number.

Good luck.

Italian - I understand your concerns but she actually said we would be competing against other adopters for children. I questioned this and she said it was like bidding for them! DH and I were both quite shocked by this. I understand that every adopter wants a healthy happy child but she dismissed us as wanting "what everyone else wants" without actually asking what we were prepared to consider. We totally get that the child's SW has to look at all the prospective adopters who match the criteria but that was not what was said and when I asked this, I was told that we wouldn't be viewed favourably because of our dogs!

Having daily dealings with SW through my own job I'm gobsmacked by her assumptions and lack of assessment - as a professional I would be out of work if I made sweeping statements without allowing my clients a chance to speak about their opinion.

fledto, remembering our first chats to SWs from various agencies, I totally get where you are coming from. Some spoke to us so very patronisingly... assuming we knew nothing, and not bothering to find out/be openminded/ask us questions. Some of our first contacts were pretty much about sitting there being lectured, without being able to get a word in edgewise. For instance SW 'have you read up on adoption' me 'yes, I ha-' her 'I suggest you read a lot more, I suggest you read this this and that' me 'erm... I've actually read this and that but this other one is not relevant to us because -' her 'well clearly you need to do a lot more reading, call us in a year or so when you have done that'.
Or the standard and pretty omnipresent 'you will need to parent an adopted child differently than you parent your birth child. You won't be able to use time-outs or naughty steps' (who says I'd ever use timeouts or naughty steps with my birth child? Huge assumptions there. And anyway, if the needs of an adopted child ended with not using timeouts and naughty steps then things would be much simpler than I'm anticipating).

And yes, when it's them who are doing most of the talking, how can they possibly 'assess' if we would be suitable to take further into the process?

Others we talked to were completely different though. Calm, good balance of asking us questions/letting us talk, and explaining things to us/answering our questions, open-minded, active listening, some probing questions (indicating they had really 'got' what we were saying, had understood it well enough to be able to pick up exactly were our thought processes may be going wrong, rather than to just say 'that won't work) treating us as 'learning partners' in this process of assessment and preparation, rather than as imbeciles who need the 'facts' drummed in, and need to be kept in line.

It was no question at all as to what we preferred! Though our assessing SW turned out not to be the same one as the one who had done our initial visit, so when you do meet someone from the next agency, be prepared to ask what the likelihood is for this person to be the one who takes you through assessment and panel and matching.
Also I don't know how many agencies you have 'within distance' but if you are keen to save some time, perhaps get in touch with several now, rather than waiting until maybe this second one turns out not to be ideal for some reason or other.

fledtoscotland wow I can't believe it, well I can, but it's shocking to say 'bidding'! Sorry you had that.

I agree with 64x32x24 to see if the sw from first visit is likely to be the one who does your home study, ours was not.

All best wishes.

Just spoken to another agency and it was like chalk & cheese! Discussed the dogs and my boys and they have said that they are happy that we have talked about what we would do if there was a prob between AC & dogs. Want us to read up on sexual abuse (he mentioned about children who hurt animals so not sure if it's related). Anyway feel much happier and confident changing agency was the right thing for us.

Also he wasn't at all patronising asking what we had read etc. explained I work in CP and he says this was to our advantage as we are fully aware of the types of children needing homes.