First meeting with the FC before going to panel and meeting limited to 40ish min. What did you ask??

[flowerpowerlondon]

I'm not being lazy honest its just that I'm meant to be working on questions to ask the FC when we meet her before we go to panel. Not until next month but getting organised. We have quite a lot of info from her and the children's social worker but as the sw's will be with us and we only have a small window of time I want to get ideas of what others asked at a first meeting. There are loads I want to ask but they are things that can wait. This seems to be more to make sure we are going to matching panel fully aware of what we are committing to. Anyway any suggestions or advice from the more experienced adopters or FC's on your top question suggestions would be gratefully received

Have a look at this post on Adoption UK. Hopefully this will give you an idea :-) www.adoptionuk.org/adoption-uk-archived-forum?forum=12&topic=48732

The list linked above is very long...

You need to get whatever info you need from the current carer to help you make sure you know what you are getting into.

Broadly speaking:

• development. Is this supposedly inline with 'normal' or have you been told about delays? Check where the child really is. (child reports might be a few months out of date)

• medical. Are there any medical issues? Check the FC describes the management of them as being the same as you have been told. (have things got easier or harder since the report was written? ditto the medical advisor may not have seen the child for a few months)

• behaviour. Have any behaviour issues been flagged up? (lively, spirited, loves adult attention, can be challenging). Ask FC to describe behaviour on a 'normal' day and on a 'bad' day and what main flashpoints are (and find out how frequent bad days are). Ask FC about behaviour when first placed.

hth

We brought a small I mean very small jotted put all our questions down in the jotter and asked her when she had time to answer in detail

It was really useful it was like a manual in the first days

Because also you may find there are things the FC may not want to say with manager and sw sitting there starting there is a LOT of pressure not to say anything to spook the adopters

Because also you may find there are things the FC may not want to say with manager and sw sitting there starting there is a LOT of pressure not to say anything to spook the adopters

fishwife - that's terrible. How can adopters make an informed decision if things are kept from them!! No wonder things break down in introductions if FCs are feeling pressured to be economical with the truth.

(We met FC without any SW present).

Thanks all really helpful. We will be meeting the FC with our sw, the children's sw and the family finding sw in the same meeting so I guess there is only so much a FC would be comfortable saying in this scenario Hopefully we will get a good gauge and we are 100% committed to going forward so I can not possibly imagine anything coming up that would change our minds. We already have some great info and ideas on possible issues etc. Thanks again for the ideas of a good starting place for a newbie

Blimey, that does seem tricky with all those SW around...

....but am glad you sound already mentally committed. The idea of a book they can fill in later is one I shall be 'borrowing'!

Ooh I REALLY like the idea of the little book of questions that can be filled in later! Trouble is, I'm meeting FC tomorrow so will need to prepare one ASAP!!! Please can you all suggest questions...tonight?!

Sorry to completely and utterly hijack your thread OP

Aah just seen the link at the beginning of the thread...

Try and see if you can have some other on-going regular contact with the FC as well. We had weekly phone conversations at a set day and time and I was then able to ask lots more things that I didn't have time/didn't think about and by the time we met our LO we already has a good relationship with FC and felt as if we knew them and our daughter already.

We exchanged mobile numbers and email addresses with the foster carer when we met.

I really did not feel the social workers present (the foster carer's and the child's) were there to stop the foster carer telling us things, in fact the foster carer had already flagged up that our soon-to-be son was struggling a bit and his behaviour had gone down a bit. Luckily, for us, we knew that this can happen as children prepare to leave a foster plcement for adoption and I wonder how much our our soon-to-be son knew and was acting out his confusion about life! So 'our' foster carer was very open and honest, I felt. That is not to say that restrictions on what foster carers say does not happen, it may well, but I don't think it always does.

In terms of what to ask, ask about things in general, ask about special cases - unusual things that may not crop up during the the introductions, ask about how to prepare for introductions (e.g. we found out things about our soon-to-be son so we could buy some gifts and prepare his room etc).

I guess I also wanted to reassure the foster carer about anything they might worry about, how we were feeling (excited and happy) and our dd was being prepare, I think I told this or implied this so they would feel at peace and also that we wanted some form of ongoing contact for the sake of our soon-to-be son and also because the foster carer really did care. I also thanked her for the amazing job she had done and said I was very aware of it having read about how he was during his time with them. Looking back this looked really creepy crawly but came from a place of good intentions!