Just not sure with Social worker...

[selly24]

After meeting with SW didnt really gel with her.... Her colleague who visited prior to us submitting the ROI was so lovely and definitelt felt she 'got us' uykwim...
Know that they are meant to be professional and not your friend etc but am really not feeling 'right'. Is it possibl/advisable to request a change? Not sure what I was expecting.
Has anyone else felt like this?

You can request a change, but you will need to give a reason for it, and I'm not sure that not gelling would be sufficient at this stage in proceedings.

I'd give it a few sessions and see if you can build a constructive working relationship - it might be that you just take longer to click than with the other SW. If not, then you can speak to the manager about a change in SW but you would be doing so having given it a go

I had three different social workers during the process and to be honest I never felt the need to gel with any of them so I'm probably not the best person to reply. Really all I wanted pre-matching was that they were efficient and did their job with minimum pain to me. I treated it a bit like a job interview.

I'm not sure how common it is to get the same social worker all the way through the process (but then the process was a lot longer then) but I would be inclined to do as Fifty says and see whether you can develop a good working relationship with her - after all they do want to see that you can persevere even when things aren't perfect!

Thats 3 social workers in addition to the one who did the initial visit btw - I think I might have seen every adoption social worker in the team! And only very recently stumbled across an old post of mine on here grumbling about a new social worker so I know I didn't always find them easy.

We are going into stage 2 and our social worker has submitted info to her manager that we werent ready to submit as well as saying some passively offensive things like 'that could be done if you shopped at Aldi', which we do. And she give us the impression that she is uncomfortable around us, shes on edge, like she's new, but she isn't. I would ask to speak with the manager and say you just want a second opinion on whether people do change before proceeding, explain that you want someone that helps you open up and feel comfortable. I would tell them what it was the first SW did that was different and see what they suggest.

We have not asked to change as we feel that stage 2will show if she can be comfortable and she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

We were the same with ours but have to say we were much like Kew in just getting on with it. She wasn't as bad as we first thought and got through fine. She'll never be someone I miss though now we're almost finished. My lo's sw is lovely though and we really hit it off despite me having initial reservations do you never know how it will work out.
I don't think you need to have that connection you just need them to be professional.

I took the view that our tough, scary and unempathetic SW for Stage 2 was not working for / with us, but on behalf of our future child. On behalf of that child, I would want someone who turned over every rock, trusted no-one and checked everything. And she did .

Thankyou so much for your posts everyone. Mo you hit the nail on the head. We will think in these terms now! ????